


Blackguard

by Palmira



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Children, Couch Sex, M/M, Modern Times Eruri, Mystery, Thriller, creepy sandwiches, day-care center, little creatures, strange little Smith
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2016-05-09
Packaged: 2018-04-21 14:16:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 44,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4832228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Palmira/pseuds/Palmira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam Smith is the strangest little creature Levi has ever taken care of. But just when he works his way under the shell of that peculiar day-care-project, he's confronted with the center of Adam's life: Erwin.<br/>Adam being a strange brat and Erwin being a pretentious bastard obviously isn't enough. Levi is stubborn. But the unfurling mystery becomes more than he's bargained for when Levi discovers that with the Smith family, 'simple' is never part of the plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Robot Games

Levi knew that liking children in general was impossible: there would always be those he couldn't relate to, those who ticked him off or those who rather disliked him.

But all of them were interesting. Even though children in a day-care center were naturally still very young, the clearness of their developing personalities was amazing; they were as kind and vicious as anyone, but they were honest about it.

Having said that, they were filthy, incredibly loud and energetic creatures – everything fascinating had to have a downside.

At least it was rewarding to get them clean and remotely to... low volume.

Levi frowned at a pair of small hands presented to him. “You did _not_ wash those.”

Rico glared back at him. “I did.”

Being honest did not stop children from _trying_ to lie, just to see whether they got away with it. Rico glared some more, and when Levi said nothing and glared back, she sighed the child-equivalent to 'You win this time' and trudged back to the bathroom to wash her hands. Levi allowed himself a small smirk – it wasn't hard to see that Rico would be stubborn as a mule before even considering puberty, but she did respect his authority with the full earnest of a four-year-old.

When she returned to where Levi was standing guard in the door leading to the group room, she presented her hands again, which were pink from scrubbing and smelled sweetly of soap.

Levi stepped aside to let her pass, yet Rico remained, glowering at him with a stern expression that she probably didn't know looked cute. “Levilevi?”

He'd never understand how some children insisted on prolonging a name that was comfortably short, but he didn't comment on it – as long as parents didn't pick up that name, which some of them had.

He did draw the line at 'Levilove', though.

“Yes?”

Rico's expression lightened slightly; she liked being taken seriously, and when Levi crouched down to meet her eyes, she seemed to forgive him for being irrationally stern with hygiene. “Adam said it's important to have clean hands in the kitchen. Why is that?”

Because Adam Smith sometimes was a strange kid.

Without looking into the direction of the bathroom, Levi replied evenly: “Because dirty hands can get the food dirty. And then it might make you sick.”

Rico blanched slightly. “Is that what will happen?”

“It might. And it's bad manners not to wash your hands.”

Rico tried not to look guilty – and failed. Before she could solidify the belief that she had put her whole group into mortal danger by not cleaning her hands properly before touching any food, Levi sighed and took her scrubbed hand, trying not to groan when he rose. Another downside of this job definitely was getting up dozens of times per day...

“Your hand's clean. Mine is, too. So we'll cut fruits now.”

He wasn't born for this – but then again, he wasn't doing terribly, seeing how Rico's face brightened and she took a firm hold of this thumb.

 

As Levi had thought, it took at least seven minutes until his co-worker Eld joined him in the group room, leading a scrawny boy with green suspenders by his hand. The boy's hair was ash blonde and fine, the kind of color that usually turned into dirt-blonde over the years, and his pale skin gave him a fragile air. His brown eyes, seemingly too big and too dark for his face, stared at the ground, even when Eld was making a visible effort to motivate him.

It wasn't abnormal that children had those moods – in fact, there wasn't a single one that hadn't suddenly burst out in tears in the morning or thrown a fit over the afternoon nap. That was something every one of them had learned to deal with.

However, things were a little different with Adam Smith.

The boy was quiet to begin with, and although apparently a bright one, it was difficult to win his interest and engage him in activities that included more than three people. He wasn't openly refusing emotional or physical contact, but he seemed to find it difficult to express himself and tended towards isolation.

Still, he could be as vibrant as any other child, and his joy in knowledge and mental challenges was rewarding. He seemed to hunger for praise as much as he was hesitant to ask for it.

“Would you like to watch first?” The look Eld shot him told Levi that he was running out of ideas how to capture Adam's attention – which boy his age could  _ not _ relate to fruit salad, anyway?

Adam shook his head, casting shy glances at the other children sitting at the table but making no move to sit on his own chair.

“Sit on my lap, then?”

Eld was nothing if not patient, but with a whole of eleven other children demanding his attention, wanting to show him something, having super-important questions and generally requiring to sit on his lap as well, waiting for a reaction from Adam was rather difficult. After Levi had dealt with all of them alone for the time it took Eld to maneuver Adam out of the bathroom, he was almost tempted to be unhelpful.

Almost. One did not abandon a comrade in the midst of battle.

“I'll explain what we're doing now, Adam. Sit next to me, you'll hear me better.”

Information was what could draw Adam in, along with the promise of shielding him from the group until he'd accommodated. The boy still was hesitant, especially when Ilse loudly complained as Levi gently moved her from his lap, but by then, Eld had declared that he had _absolutely_ no idea what was going on, and got several extremely well-shaped pieces of fruit thrust in his general direction. As he admired them accordingly, Adam moved his chair beside Levi's and sat, his feet dangling in the air and his back very straight.

“Vitamins are important”, he said in his quiet, high voice, offering what he knew about the topic. Levi didn't know whether he expected interrogation, but an interruption was not in order. “You need them for your eyes. And your brain. And your bones.”

His dark eyes moved to the yellow chopping board and the bits of apple that Ilse had begun to cut. A dull butter-knife lied next to it, already sticky with juice.

“No sharp knife. You could cut yourself and then you'd bleed.” Adam glanced at him, estimating whether he was right, and whether Levi was satisfied with his speech. As much as pedagogy told him to praise the effort the child had made, Levi felt strange when Adam lectured him like this – as if this was a pop quiz.

Adam's parents were probably a little off the rails, to be honest.

“That's right. Sounds like I can let you start.” Levi smiled slightly, but Adam frowned at him – much like Rico had done before, though completely different at the same time. Because the boy looked like he was wondering whether refusing was even humanly possible. He pulled at his sleeves, brown cashmere that seemed far too expensive to wear it to day-care.

“I don't want to get dirty.”

So far, Adam hadn't shown any signs of eating disorder, and Levi knew children well enough to know that he wasn't actually disgusted.

He held out his hands to Adam, his fingers much longer in comparison. “Then you use my hands.”

Adam still tugged firmly at his sleeves, but he eyed Levi's hands curiously. “You can't cut with your fingers”, he replied finally, perfectly reasonable. “They're dull.”

“I'll hold the knife. And the apple. You move my wrists.”

Adam rubbed his chin, a gesture he'd definitely picked up from an adult (probably his Dad, Levi thought), having let go of his sleeves at last. Levi gave him a few seconds more to consider, then added: “I'm your robot.”

The way Adam's pale face brightened made it abundantly clear that Levi had struck a nerve. His eyebrows were still knitted together in determination as he slipped from his chair and climbed on Levi's lap, his little feet twitching in anticipation. When Levi had taken hold of the knife with one hand and the rest of the apple with the other, Adam latched his cool fingers onto his wrists and began his experiment.

It was slow – Levi could feel that the boy indeed noticed whenever his 'tools' moved on their own accord, and it threatened to kill his fun and break his concentration. And it was exhausting, keeping his muscles tense all the time, his legs quickly fell asleep and his back hurt from sitting straight on these annoyingly small chairs.

But Adam Smith was happy.

He was still happy when they had prepared the salad, slumping back against Levi and staring into space as his brain processed his activities. Even when other children demanded attention, he seemed remarkably undisturbed, moving wordlessly from Levi's lap when said man, by all means, needed to get up.

He did love the 'robot game' from that day on.

Adam preferred to play it with Levi, though he also allowed other childcare workers in it as long as he wasn't required to sit on their lap (leading to many joyous back-aches from looming over chairs and stiff knees from crouching on the ground). Once he became absorbed, he stopped his lectures – that strange habit of rattling off information. At first Levi thought he got it from watching television, but they were odd facts, random, and sometimes Adam came to him with questions that puzzled him. Like how hot the steam of a steam-engine exactly was. Or how sponges were made from plants underwater.

Children came up with brighter questions than most people thought, but this was something else. Levi had never considered his general education lacking, and still, Adam usually overstrained his knowledge. The boy did appreciate an educated guess, though.

“I don't remember him being this curious before.” Eld sighed as they took their break together, rubbing his forehead. “It probably means he's come into his own, but... Damn, I'm running out of clever answers.”

Levi thought of how Adam had never minded coming to the day-care center while other children were naturally scared of the new environment. “I've never seen his parents.”

They had left the grounds to have a smoke – it was a hard habit to break, and as long as it was kept at a sufficient distance from the children, nobody cared.

“You won't.” Eld shrugged. “He shares a taxi with a few other kids, and his folks don't show up for parents' day. I'm not so sure they read those invitations at all.”

“He doesn't mention them either.” Normal children did – whether they compared them, bragged about them or just recited their rules from home. Levi felt uneasy remembering how Adam always seemed to not listen when that topic came up. If asked directly, he seemed confused, as if 'Mommy' and 'Daddy' were some abstract words from a foreign language.

“Well, there _is_ Erwin. That's the only unfamiliar name I ever heard him use.”

Levi cast him a glance, his cigarette halfway to his mouth. “He did?”

“Yeah.” Eld poked at a piece of carrot from his lunch. He had quite the caring girlfriend, but even she couldn't evoke a love for vegetables in him, not to mention beating his habit of smoking out of him. “For all I know, it could be his favorite toy or some cartoon figure from TV. I just asked him where he gets all that stuff.”

“And that was his answer?”

“Jep.”

It did make sense, aside from the fact that no sensible producer would name a product 'Erwin'. Unless said producer had fallen a couple of times from the changing table himself.

“Or it's his imaginary friend,” Eld added.

Levi felt himself grinning wryly. “I don't think he has that concept.”

“He could have an imaginary, steam-driven, hybridized, laser-scanning robot-friend. He's got _that_ concept, thanks to you.” But Eld said it without heat. “He likes you.”

“Kids do. Or don't.”

“Really?” Eld gave him a strange, thoughtful smile. “We're exchangeable. Next time you take a day off, I'll see how well we get on with that little fellow.”

Adam had only been in the center for a few months, and so far, Levi had always worked – he hardly ever got sick, and he wasn't really planning his vacation either. He blew out another lungful of smoke.

“Quit fucking with me.”

Eld laughed. “Now _that's_ what Anka always tells me, too.”

“She tells you to quit fucking me?”

“Of course. I'm supposed to fuck my way up the job ladder, not stick to colleagues.”

Levi wouldn't even mind sleeping with someone of Eld's easy humor. He refrained from telling him that, instead he ground out his cigarette. “I'll remember that next time you want my help in the bathroom.”

Eld laughed again and clapped his back in a definitively comradely fashion.

It was probably for the best anyway.

 

The next week gifted them with sunshine and tentative warmth, which had the children bouncing around in the well-defined playground behind the care center.

Most of them, anyway.

They had given little cans of soapwater to the older children, and by now the still bare garden was floating with bubbles, with ecstatic little creatures bouncing after them or trying to create bubbles large enough to swallow the whole house or at least the swings. Levi thought it was nice, those creatures totally absorbed in their game that needed no adults, no rules, just an endless flow of energy.

It also meant that they would all be sleeping soundly later, and that he could sit for a minute on a bench actually meant for his height. He was keeping watch with another worker, but aside from drinking the soapwater (which they'd been over already) and the usual falls, there wasn't any danger.

Adam stood next to the door, as if waiting for it to open. The children were dressed in sweatshirts, some even in t-shirts, and he looked strangely solemn in his flannel shirt that was carefully tucked into his pants. Dress pants, Levi would have called them, but who dressed a kid in those for a day at the center?!

Adam wasn't interested in bubbles, and Levi guessed he didn't like the slick mixture of water and soap either. But he did watch Levi – inconspicuously, if you disregarded his age and the fact that nobody was a born spy. So he was blatantly obviously about trying.

Another thing Levi never liked was kids watching adults like that, as if they weren't sure whether it was safe to approach. Adam wasn't fearful like a child familiar with violence, only... insecure, as if he tried to decide whether his concerns were important enough to bother an adult.

When it became clear that he wouldn't come himself, only wait until they were called in for lunch, Levi turned his head towards him.

“Wanna sit?”

All workers were reminded to watch their speech around the children, but there were times when Levi couldn't really care about his pronunciation. It was hard enough to keep curses from slipping.

Adam's face was blank. “Yes.”

He climbed onto the bench next to Levi, keeping a polite distance when other children his age would come running to sit on your lap or at least snuggle up to your side. Levi knew Adam enjoyed it as much as any other kid, but also that he disliked being pulled in, even if it was for the best intentions. And at the same time, he craved to be asked. It meant that he hadn't suffered any kind of abuse on that side either, he was just... strange.

Levi expected him to ask another question he'd been brooding on, but Adam stayed quiet, sitting very straight, his hands resting symmetrically on his skinny thighs, his head slightly bowed. Like he'd just been grounded. He was paler than usual too, with bags under his eyes.

“Had a bad dream?”

Levi was just guessing, as nightmares weren't uncommon for any kind of child. Adam stared at him, the odd mixture of his dark eyes and fair hair giving him the air of someone much older. “How did you know?”

“Everyone has them.”

Adam frowned. “Does everyone dream of fish ponds?” His pronunciation was better than most kids his age, but when he spoke quicker, he also had the typical stretch in his words.

_Fish ponds?_

“I don't know. I'm not everyone.”

Adam frowned at him. “But you are smart.” It sounded more like an accusation than like a compliment.

Levi looked at him while his elbows rested on his knees and his hands were clasped loosely. Bent like that, he needed to turn his head, and Adam met his gaze. “I don't dream of fish ponds. But I do find them eerie.”

More like disgusting, but there were certain things Adam needed to hear, and it wasn't even a lie.

“How are you not afraid of them if you find them eerie?”

Adam wanted to hear that something that scared him also scared others – grownups, not children. Levi sighed quietly. He was no good at this... feeling-stuff. “They can't harm me, that's why.”

Adam stared ahead, and Levi thought he simply didn't believe him until after minutes of silence, the boy spoke up again. “Do you think they mean something?”

If Adam had already read books on sleep disorders and dream interpretation, Levi _would_ have a word with his parents.

“They do.” Levi glanced at a group of kids quarreling over a can of soapwater, but the conflict eased without intervention. Those midgets were in way too good a mood to get into fights. “And it doesn't have to be bad, you know.”

There was something warm and dry touching his elbow. Levi turned his head in surprise to see Adam sneaking his small hand into the crook his arm; like in one of these cheesy movies, really, only that Adam was no lady in hooped skirts and frills, and Levi was anything but a gentleman.

They sat in comfortable silence for a while, Levi watching the children and Adam lost in some deep thought or for once merely watching too. The high voices and laughter were a pleasant stream of sound, and it took a moment until Levi heard something humming. Next to him, Adam flinched, his fingers digging into the crook of Levi's arm.

That was when it happened. And it was the worst of luck, really.

It was a bee, one of those early ones that were still small, the first ones from the hive and busy with procurement. It had probably been confused by the soap floating around, and when it had landed on Adam's thigh to rest, the boy had meant to push it aside, not having realized what kind of insect he faced. That was why it stung into his palm.

Adam Smith was strange on many levels, but he reacted like any other child his age: he cried out in shock and then burst into tears.

 

There was no helping it. Nothing could console Adam, even though he showed no allergic reaction, and the stream of his tears quickly reduced. Anyone working with children recognized this kind of behavior: Adam held it together, pushing the shock away until he could run to his parents and was comforted.

Which resulted in a problem – his parents could not be contacted.

After Petra returned with a helpless shrug (and she was _not_ a woman put off easily), Levi moved Adam, who was stiff and white and clutching his wounded hand and the washcloth with ice, off his lap and marched into the office.

Petra had left her folder open. Levi snatched the receiver and dialed, his brows drawn together in quiet fury.

Someone answered after the third ring. A female voice, calm and cool, likely belonging to a secretary. “How can I help you?”

She had doubtlessly recognized the number and had little intention to be helpful. Levi sure as hell didn't need her helpful. “I need to speak to Mr. or Mrs. Smith.”

“I am afraid that is not possible, sir. I can take your message-”

“You damn well _can't_. Get them to pick up their son, now.”

“I am afraid-”

“Now!”

“Sir-”

Levi slammed his hand down on Petra's desk, a sharp bang that mixed with the angry rise of his voice.

“No. Get Erwin to pick up Adam, _at once!”_

He'd see whether Eld had been right about Erwin being an imaginary friend or Adam's favorite toothpaste-testimonial.

There were a few seconds of silence, the complete absence of sounds that only a secluded office could have. Levi could practically feel the cool, dry breeze of the air-conditioner and the soft vibration of a processor.

“I understand.”

Her voice was no different from before, however – she had hesitated long. Levi knew it'd be useful to try being a little civil, at least now, but he hung up without another word.

Adam was waiting where Levi had left him, his face both gray and puffy-red. Petra had given him a compress for his hand and carefully wiped his face, but there was little she could do against his hunched posture and his constant sniffing. He looked miserable.

Levi eyed him critically. The signs of shock had eased – Adam's behavior was not due to medical reasons, even though Petra had suggested calling a doctor. They hadn't, and a sudden stab of guilt made Levi wonder whether he was taking his anger at Adam's parents out on the boy himself.

Petra had offered Adam a piece of chocolate, and other children had come by to try comforting him in their clumsy, but earnest way of patting hands and sharing experiences. Still, Adam was unmoved. He hadn't touched the chocolate either, and Levi knew he was frankly too well-bred to ask everyone to leave him alone.

_Well-bred._ Someone obviously was trying to.

Petra glanced questioningly at him, and Levi hinted a shrug. They couldn't raise false hopes, and it would be about three more hours until Adam was picked up regularly. The boy had refused lunch, and while this normally wasn't tolerated, it was also clear that he wasn't being stubborn for the sake of it.

“I'll go help Eld then.” Petra sighed and gave Adam's lank hair a last stroke before leaving him with Levi in the little break-room the workers used to treat minor injuries or let sick children rest until they could be picked up. The walls were dotted with little pictures, small handicraft works, dried flowers, all of those decorations meant to soothe children. Levi had never disliked the room at all, yet for a moment, he wondered whether all of this must seem like mockery to Adam.

The boy didn't seem to take notice. He was a both stiff and limp bundle of slightly cool limbs when Levi gently sat him between his legs to inspect the sting. He didn't lean back.

Levi glanced at the clock. It had been about six minutes since he'd called the secretary. Adam was brooding over something, and it was difficult to say whether he wanted anyone to interfere. Everything about Adam Smith was difficult.

But he himself didn't want it to be, Levi knew. Adam wanted to be simple – and he was a brat, for fuck's sake. He shouldn't... feel complicated yet, that could damn well wait until puberty.

“What's wrong?”

Adam tensed a little more. Levi could be patient with the little creatures, but since the accident, everyone had been nothing if not patient with Adam.

“If you need an answer, I need a question first.”

Adam fumbled with the compress. Levi stifled a sigh, and more importantly, a curse.

“I'd like to take a break, Adam. It's alright if you aren't hungry, but I am.” And he wanted a smoke, though that was not acceptable to say. It also wasn't acceptable to tell Adam that he needed to get back to work in his group because Petra had filled in for him, but she had her own job to do.

And it certainly didn't do to say that his parents were arrogant fuckers with a bureau full of shit-eating secretaries with much too tight panties.

Adam didn't reply. Levi moved him aside and went to retrieve his lunch. When he returned, Adam hadn't moved in the slightest. He was still sniffling pitifully.

Levi sat down beside him, keeping more distance now and avoiding a position of eye-contact without making it impossible. He opened his lunchbox and took out a neatly cut triangular sandwich.

Adam was not too miserable to be curious. What surprised Levi was that he was visibly trying to suppress it now.

Did he blame Levi for the sting? Possibly. Only one way to find out, though.

Levi offered Adam a sandwich filled with cucumbers and cress – he actually wasn't into green vegetables, but Eld was moaning about Anka's  _health-nut-cooking_ and Levi had decided to show a little solidarity. Besides, he already smoked. On bad habit was enough around the little creatures.

“Wanna trade?”

He gestured at the piece of chocolate Petra had given Adam. The boy eyed Levi's sandwich speculatively.

No child in its right mind would ever trade chocolate for a vegetable sandwich. Sure enough, Adam was an oddball – he nodded.

Levi wasn't overly fond of sweets either, and naturally, Petra had given Adam the stuff filled with caramel. Levi hated caramel.

However, they  _had_ traded. He unwrapped the chocolate and saw with some satisfaction from the corner of his eye that this made Adam raise the sandwich. His wounded hand stayed still under the compress, but he did lift the sandwich to his mouth.

Levi held his hand under the bread in time to catch a slice of cucumber. Adam wasn't stupid, so what kid his age didn't know that you needed two hands to eat a sandwich?!

Oh, yes. Kids with parents whose secretaries decided whether the brat could be picked up.

Levi had the sickening taste of caramel gluing his mouth shut and a slimy bit of cucumber in his palm when Adam finally decided to speak.

“Is it dead?”

Deciding it couldn't get worse, Levi stuck the cucumber in his mouth. Which revealed that the taste  _could_ get worse. “What?”

“The bee.” Adam hadn't swallowed yet – he never spoke with his mouth full, unlike most children, but this time, he seemed to fear his courage might fall.

Bees died once they had stung. Levi suspected Adam well knew that, so he nodded. No use sugarcoating it. He took another sandwich (lettuce and green pepper; Eld was right, it tasted somewhat... peculiar) and bit into it, glad to get rid of the taste of caramel.

Adam's chewing halted. He looked sickish, and Levi didn't think it was the sandwich.

“It died because I scared it. The other bees will wonder where it went.” Adam's voice was quiet and brittle. When he looked at Levi, his dark eyes were haunted and huge.

“I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to make it kill itself. I...” He took the compress from his palm where Levi had rubbed the sting with raw onion to weaken the poison. The skin was swollen with a little red dot, seemingly large in Adam's small hand. They both stared into it, then Adam looked up. His hand clenched the rest of his sandwich, white bread and cress welling out between his tense fingers.

“It must have hated me so much. So it stung.”

There was such a cruel logic behind his conclusion, such merciless conduction to his own, infantile self that for a moment, it closed up Levi's throat until he was sure he tasted bile.

This wasn't normal. It was normal for a brat to blame the ball when it couldn't score a goal, that the floor was at fault if one tripped, that the toy block was malicious if one stepped on it. It was not normal to think some shitty insect had decided to go kamikaze because it hated the guts of some boy whose greatest sin was wearing clothes too expensive for outdoor games and cooking. And no brat on earth should get the idea that it  _was_ .

“Bullshit.”

Despite the clear prohibition of any kind of improper language, it was the only thing Levi could say. He couldn't even think of anything else.

And just before he could buck up and clear out this nasty explanation Adam had put together for himself, the door opened.

Adam slid from his chair and ran through the room (Levi tried to remember whether he had ever seen him run before), arms outstretched and a low wail following him. He had left both the squashed sandwich and the compress behind.

The man was remarkably tall, but Adam latched onto his leg before he could even crouch, wrapping his thin arms around the trousers' cloth as if he were climbing a tree. He was sobbing; that hearty, loud siren that Levi knew as the fastest way to work out the shock. He should have been happy to hear it, but then he met startled, sharp blue eyes and knew that Adam's father wasn't coping.

The man awkwardly bowed to stroke Adam's hair as the sobbing rose to a crescendo.

“Calm yourself, Adam.” It was a tone to address a composed adult, not a crying child. The man made no move to pick Adam up either, and when the sobbing began to soften, the man straightened again to focus his stare on Levi.

He was a walking, talking parody.

Levi recognized him with something akin to a chill: the neatly parted hair, the expensive, formal clothing in different shades of brown and green, the straight stance with squared shoulders, even the intonation – it was this man that Adam looked like, wanted to look like. It was this man, who was treating him like an adult and putting information into his head that he could not yet fully understand. It was this man, who did not get to his knees or lift Adam up, but told him to _calm himself._

“I've been told there is an emergency.”

The man, tall, glorious, muscular – probably captain of the swim-team in his high school days – removed a small package from his coat and gave Adam a handkerchief without taking his eyes off Levi. In turn, Levi felt like every soap stain and dirt spot on his working clothes was highlighted, but he also felt like he absolutely wanted them there, for once desiring to be not as clean as his counterpart with his mask-like face and distinctive, yet expressionless features.

“There was a bee-sting.”

Levi hated how he sounded defensive for no reason. He got up and crossed the room as well, planting himself in front of the man. Adam was wiping his face clumsily with the paper tissue while one arm stayed circled around the leg he had chosen to hug. His dark eyes were red and wide, but the misery was fading, replaced by a tranquil expression that Levi had only seen on him after playing the 'robot-game' or the few other activities that deeply captured Adam.

So this was Erwin. He had to be.

And Erwin stared down at him as if he couldn't grasp how Levi could go hysterical about the sting of an insect. He just _knew_ that this asshole was thinking it over: tiny, screechy man, probably failed at life, fuck-starved and sort of gay, throwing hissy fits over some petty shit with insects and broken fingernails.

As if anyone fitting that description would survive one morning in a day-care center.

“And while you're here, I'd like to point out that we generally appreciate at least one parent to be available in exactly these cases,” Levi added before Erwin could spout any of that garbage. “Especially once the office calls you multiple times.” _Of course, you'd have to pull your head outta your ass to even hear the phone ringing._

Erwin regarded him nonchalantly. Adam's tears had stilled, aside from an occasional hiccup, and he watched Levi with his cheek snugged against his favorite leg. Just like any other kid, he sought a little contact when he thought no one noticed.

Levi would never admit feeling a little spark of jealousy. Up until now, he'd been the only one Adam spontaneously cuddled up to – but honestly, it was good if the brat had more people he trusted.

“Is 'this case' something you cannot manage on your own, then?”

He just hoped that the rest of them weren't uncongenial bastards like Erwin. Levi glared.

“We could, at the expense of the children.” It was getting hard to hold his tongue – why wasn't Petra here to feed Erwin his own bullshit, like she always did with parents?! Ah, yes. Because she was filling in for Levi, who was stuck explaining trash now.

Erwin blinked slowly, unimpressed.

“I'll trust your opinion on that, then.”

Meaning: _You're fucking incompetent, but you're not worth my time._

“Erwin.” Levi flashed him a poisonous smile, taking a silly bit of joy in calling the man so intimately by his first name. “I'll take responsibility over trust.”

He'd stepped over a line, he knew. It was just that something about Erwin had immediately annoyed him, had made something hot and angry coil in his stomach and-

“Can we go home?”

Erwin reacted to Adam's careful request with the same stoicism he had shown Levi. His eyes didn't let go of Levi's face. “I appreciate your intent. But I suggest you focus on your clientele, please.” His tone was command. When he dropped his gaze to Adam, it was because he had dismissed Levi, as if he had any right to. As if he decided when this was over. “We can go.”

Levi had to admit he was dumbstruck for a second.

“I need to get my bag. And my jacket.” Adam abruptly vanished from the room, Levi wouldn't have been surprised if he had blended into the wallpaper in the progress.

And because Erwin was a pretentious, rotten scumbag, he gave Levi a curt, polite nod and the barest of smirks.

“There's chocolate in the corner of your mouth.”

The words “fuck you” bounced off the thick cashmere over Erwin's back.

Twenty-one hours from then, Levi realized what this encounter had truly initiated.


	2. Rest

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erwin offered him an artificial smile with the barest flash of teeth. “You did. I'll meet you tomorrow, Mr. Mercer.”  
> This time, the little stings among his spine weren't anger. He was absently aware of Adam tugging at Erwin's trouser leg, his hair still sticking out like a thin, wiry halo. “That's not his name, Erwin.”  
> Erwin's eyes had once again left Levi, knowing fully that he dominated the situation, that he set its rules.  
> “It is. Come.”

The next day brought an unwelcome, yet not unfamiliar visitor: migraine.

Levi knew it since he was four. It began with waking up with his whole body stiff with tension and the illusion of needles pinning his muscles in place. It continued with nausea and headache and the nasty feeling of jelly filling his mind and dragging away every thought until he couldn't concentrate on the simplest tasks. The last part was what he hated most.

If he caught the telltale signs early enough, he took pills that staved off the worst – they still turned his mind a little sluggish and made him sleepy, but he was mostly alright and got his work done. And then there were occasions like these, when the migraine struck like a mean bolt out of the blue.

He called in sick and closed the curtains, wishing not for the first time that his flat had proper shutters to block out the sun. Then again, he preferred moving in the dusty twilight, lighting a thick, cylindrical candle as the only source of natural light.

What Levi hated most about the migraine was his annoyingly dull mind. The second most hated symptom was his ever-stinging skin. It got worse if he showered, as if the drops were hammering into his skull, so he scrubbed his skin with a washcloth, which took ages. Then, because every other kind of fabric tickled unpleasantly, he put on the silk underwear and robe he owned for just this purpose.

Not entirely. As Levi slid the cool wild silk over his shoulders, he shivered – he always did. Because for a moment, it flooded him with the memory of heavy, warm, dark silk, richly filled with a perfume scent he couldn't place. His mother, draping silk over him, running her hands gently over his skin as if to rub the fabric in. It was blissful, the memory of something covering him, shielding him from that disease, soothing his misery.

Back then, he hadn't known why his mother owned a silk robe laced with perfume. Ignorance was another kind of bliss, really.

Once he'd finally finished washing, Levi sat on the floor of his living-room and carefully began to struggle through his course of movements. He had often and thoroughly rolled his eyes at Farlan for bugging him into some stupid routine with Feldenkrais, stating that it wouldn't do any good, but he had to admit that it made his head feel better, and it shortened the duration of the migraine.

Not that he would shout that from the rooftops. He wouldn't even admit it too loudly.

There was a knock on the door – a low sound, but so unexpected that Levi flinched.

He had a doorbell. Though at this moment, he preferred it not to be used, so perhaps it was someone who knew that he was currently indisposed. But his colleagues were working, so... Levi took a long cardigan from the couch to put it on (as long as it didn't touch his skin, he could tolerate it) and went to the door to glance out of the peephole. He didn't see anyone.

Doorbell pranks made more sense when there was, well, a doorbell involved. Levi frowned, and his muscles reminded him that they didn't like that. His mind already felt exhausted, and his eyes stung from the brightness outside. He opened the door without unhooking the chain, peering through the gap with a decidedly disgruntled air.

Adam Smith stepped into his line of vision. And there, he waited for Levi to acknowledge him.

The weakness in his knees could be low blood pressure or sheer disbelief. Levi couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, ignoring the unpleasant prickling under his skin. Questions. Questions were exhausting.

“What.”

He failed at an inquiring tone, but as usual, Adam showed no bewilderment. “Good morning.” When he realized that this was no kind of answer, he added: “I'm visiting.”

“You're supposed to be at the center now,” Levi rasped, subtly leaning against the door frame.

“You, too.” Adam's voice wasn't accusing; it was hard to place what it actually was. High and thin as always. He was pale, and the shadows made his eyes seem even larger and darker.

Levi unhooked the chain and stuck his head out. Nobody else was on the corridor, and he suspected that nobody was waiting outside the house either. Adam was alone.

“Come in.”

 

Levi didn't try to squeeze an explanation out of Adam and went straight to calling Petra in her office. She was just as surprised as he was to hear where Adam was, which did little to soothe his annoyance.

“He was in the taxi. But then he said he felt ill, and there was no way to contact his father again, so when Adam said he knew where to go...” Her sigh made Levi's head throb. “I'm sorry. I don't have any idea how he even found you, and I know you can't bring him here...”

The thought of daylight and traffic noises sickened him. Levi grit his teeth and felt the tension in his muscles rising again as he glanced at Adam sitting dutifully on his couch, spine painfully straight. Levi had withdrawn into the small kitchen to make his call, and it didn't seem like Adam even tried to eavesdrop. Come to think of it, he hadn't been curious yesterday either, when Petra had tried calling his parents.

“He can't _stay._ ”

If anyone found out, Levi was in scorching hot water. Being gay usually made no difference in his everyday-work; if anything, women considered him to be more sensitive towards their needs and those of their children, whatever gave them that idea. However, with a young boy here without his family agreeing to it, alone with Levi – it didn't need a father like Erwin fucking Smith to throw a tantrum. Levi knew he could have been the prime example of a virtuous citizen and still be suspected of incorrect conduct if caught in a situation like this.

“I know.” Petra sounded genuinely unhappy, yet she didn't whine about anything. Sensible woman, always. “But the number we used yesterday has... disconnected. I don't know, it's not recognized.”

“Get the taxi to pick him up, then!”

“That would be outside our contract, so I'd need Adam's address for it, and the company itself must keep discretion.”

“He found _my_ house, he'll know his own address.”

“That so.” Petra sounded a tad bit impatient. “If you get it out of him, tell me anytime. He's always refused to give his address.”

Levi groaned and ran a hand through his hair, the pesky stinging in his scalp doing a poor job of venting his frustration. “Lemme guess... Daddy's orders?”

“Probably. I'll try to get hold of that secretary again, maybe the network's off. Until then... There has to be a reason Adam wants to see you. If there's anything off...”

Levi knew what she meant, but Adam hadn't given the image of an abused, insecure child yesterday. Quite the contrary, he loved Erwin to bits, for whatever reason. Something was odd between the two – and now the number they had used yesterday was dead.

Whatever was going on, he had a courtesy call from an almost-four-year-old on his couch. And he didn't feel up to it one bit, but it seemed like he had no say in that matter.

Adam was sitting on the couch as Levi had asked him to; stiff, expressionless and not curious in the least. His discomfort, though, was visible. While calling the day-care center first had been legally sensible, it didn't feel quite fair towards Adam. Levi willed the pounding in his head away (without success) and sat beside the boy. Although he made an effort to move slowly, his weight almost catapulted Adam up from the cushion.

Adam didn't even smile. Damn, this was awkward.

“How did you find me?”

The boy hunched just slightly, as if the question introduced a strict sermon – Levi would be damned before he lectured brats even on his sick days, but wrapping his mind around Adam's twisted character was difficult at full performance capability already, and snapping at him was all too easy.

“I'm not pissed, you know. Just wasn't expecting that.” This was his flat, and he'd use his vocabulary as he damn well pleased. Couldn't hurt if Adam learned some new words to delight his prickly genitor.

Adam didn't seem relieved, but at least he answered. “You told us where you live.”

He surely hadn't. Levi frowned (his muscles tickled again) and regarded Adam as mindful as his brain managed right now – the murky lighting conditions made it harder to read the boy, and he refused to meet Levi's eyes. He was as carefully dressed as ever, with high-grade clothing fitting him like a glove (did Erwin take his measurements before putting out his stuff?!) and his hair neatly combed. In the dusky room, he was pale as a sheet. His small palm was wrapped in a gauze bandage that looked professional enough to stop a major bleeding, not keep a child from scratching at a little sting.

“I didn't.”

“You did.” Adam flashed him a piercing look, for a moment eerily reminding Levi of Erwin. It was startling; Adam didn't get angry, even when other kids buggered him, but this expression was rather close to it.

_Is he accusing me of lying?_

Well, he _had_ described his apartment building on one or two occasions, merely as a part of an exercise to make the children memorize their own homes so they could describe them if they got lost. But he was rather sure he hadn't been very precise – the city was littered with nondescript structures like this one, so why bother? Adam couldn't have guessed his address from that.

“Did you walk here?” The real question would only result in more headache. Levi gingerly rubbed his eyes to ease the stinging a little.

Adam hunched a little more, as if he was a house slowly collapsing. “I took the taxi.”

That little shit... He'd actually lied to Petra, so she had believed he was ill and being taken home? And instead, that bastard had transported a child to a vaguely identified address?

If only his mind wasn't so damn slow! Levi gave up on asking questions that produced answers which pounded pain into his head. Leaning forward with his elbows on his knees to catch Adam's eye, he gave a weary sigh. “Why're you here, Adam.”

A little more color drained from the boy's face, and he seemed to go even stiffer, unmoving, as if any kind of movement drew attention and potential danger. Levi knew that stance. Sometimes he wished he didn't, on occasions where he didn't feel like realism.

Adam was on guard, with more sincerity than a kid his age usually had.

“You were not there. I came.”

“Came here because I wasn't working?”

Adam nodded, a jerky little movement.

He'd been brought to the center, just like any other morning, and found that Levi wasn't there. And then he'd left by consciously tricking adults, something that required considerable cunning and a plan, since the center usually couldn't send a child away if it wasn't also clear that it would be cared for. All on the fixed idea that he needed to see Levi?

He could only guess. Then again, that was all he ever did with Adam Smith.

“I'm not working because I'm sick. You know that happens suddenly.” Levi wasn't up to explaining some shit medical science hadn't yet worked out, but for once, Adam didn't seem interested in hearing more detailed information either. He lifted his gaze from the floor, his large eyes scanning his face with something like appraisal and a diluted trace of hope.

“You were not angry.”

Oh, he'd been fucking angry yesterday, so angry that he'd kept his mouth firmly shut to keep the colorful curses from spilling out until the little creatures were safely out of earshot. But that was not what Adam meant. He wanted to hear that Levi was not angry _at him._

“I'm not angry.” As long as he didn't think of Erwin Smith, that was.

Pesky as it was, Levi knew that he had to reprimand Adam for lying to others and sneaking up here – and still, as he caught the crushing relief flitting over the child's face, he couldn't quite bring himself to actually deliver that speech.

“You said that your rooftop was dark-green. And that one of your neighbors had yellow curtains. And that there is a convenience store across the street. And a bike rack with a pushcart tied to it.” Adam rattled off the little bits of information he had memorized, relief blurring in his voice. “And you take the bus to the west, and Erwin said it goes to the quarters across the river and it's old factory area.” He stopped for a deep breath. “What disease do you have?”

_Disease_ . As if Levi might have scabies or some shit. Or maybe just the mention of Erwin had irritated him enough to think that Adam had meant that – which he hadn't. He rubbed his eyes again, feeling incredibly weary after the heavy work of dragging the whole story out of Adam, and since there was no way to get rid of the little worrywart...

Speaking of which, Adam looked tired, too. He'd already given that impression yesterday, but it was worse now, even with the poor light conditions. Maybe his nightmares had gotten worse after the shock, thus he might be more prone to exaggerated fears like Levi changing jobs because of him.

“I'm tired,” Levi said, not wishing to discuss his ailment with a child. “We can... do something later, but now, I'm really, really tired.”

Adam was a quiet boy, he could entertain himself – Levi didn't have picture books or any toys, aside from some toddler stuff he'd tried to fix, but he could get him paper and some crayons, maybe he even had that boring puzzle he'd gotten from secret Santa... If it meant he got some sleep, he was fine.

Adam regarded him with great sincerity, his small brows furrowed. He looked so much like his father now, and at the same time, oddly vulnerable. “You didn't sleep either?”

_Either?_

He certainly hadn't gotten a good rest, that was part of the migraine. Levi shrugged carefully, well aware that Adam watched intently. “Not really.”

“Erwin didn't sleep at all.” Adam sounded awed at an adult's ability to stay up so long, and almost terse, as if the matter that kept Erwin up was too great to even speak of. So a child, its parent was superhuman – to Adam, it seemed like god had decided to not switch the sun off at night.

“So you tried the same.” Levi didn't try to keep the annoyance from his voice. Just... what was wrong with Erwin and his shitty habits, allowing a brat to stay up that long?

Adam flashed him a confused look, obviously having heard that tone, but unable to comprehend how Levi could doubt the importance of pulling an all-nighter. “He was worried.”

He'd be even more worried if his son didn't return as usual. Levi preferred not to think about it. “Adults do that all the time. So I...”

He rose to retrieve something for Adam's occupation and hopefully make his way to the bedroom – to his surprise, the boy got to his feet as well, staring up expectantly. His knees felt unpleasantly weak, and Levi's patience was running out.

“I'll get you some stuff,” he explained.

“Levi?”

“Yes.” He couldn't help sounding a little gruff now. Adam lowered his eyes again, fiddling with one of his sleeves and chewing on his lip.

_I'm not calling you a cab, you little imp._

“I'm really, really tired.”

Levi was sympathetic to that idea, at least. He nodded and took a few steps towards the bedroom, but was surprised when Adam moved to follow him.

“I'll get you a blanket and a pillow for the couch, alright?”

“Do you sleep on the couch?”

“I...” Levi interrupted himself once his brain had processed what Adam had said, and what it implied: he meant to stay in the same room as Levi, preferably even use the same sleeping-accommodation as him – as reserved as Adam usually was, this seemed to be something he was absolutely used to. And obviously something he demanded, as well.

Explained how Erwin's insomnia had kept him up, but absolutely fantastic, that made things complicated. If not outright problematic.

Levi absolutely hated anyone but him sleeping in his bed. It didn't do, he couldn't stand it – he had seen too much happen on these pieces of furniture, he knew their... dirt, their defilement, no matter which person used it and whether said person had been rootedly dry-cleaned before. He also couldn't sleep if he shared a bed; he ended up tossing and turning, only dozing for some minutes before waking again. Levi didn't want anyone in the same bed as him, and he didn't want anyone in _his_ bed.

Made sex a little painful or uncomfortable at times, but if it meant that his bed was spared, Levi didn't care. He'd be damned if he ever had sex in a bed.

And to leave that awkward topic, there was also no way he could ever share a bed with a child under his protection. That was positively illegal.

If the way Adam moved to follow him was anything to go by, he'd probably insist – he wasn't a fragile child, at least not considering his health, so why he shared a room with his father was beyond Levi; they seemed wealthy enough.

Levi dropped back into the cushions and his suspicion was immediately confirmed when Adam hopped up to sit beside him.

Well, fuck. He wasn't some 24/7-nanny!

He could pull out the footrest of the couch... It was a broad, extensible block that had cushions as well, and Adam was small and skinny, he could actually fit there if he placed his head on the couch. Stifling a groan, Levi leaned forward to swing it out, giving it a sharp jerk because he never used the stupid thing.

Adam brightened a little – in a world build for adults, he seemed to love something fitting his height as much as any other kid. “Is that soft?”

As soft as crumb foam could be. Levi let him explore this engineering marvel while he himself took off the cardigan – as soon as he laid down, the wool would rub unpleasantly, and he wasn't cold. The days were getting warmer, vernal. Not the time of the year any kid should spend sleepless nights and dreary days in some darkened flat.

But that was just how it was. Life didn't run on assumptions.

Adam eyed the cardigan curiously, with visible hesitation. As naturally as he'd demanded to stay in the same room as Levi for his nap, asking for something else brought out his usual reluctance.

“I can get you a blanket, y'know.” Levi said it while handing over the cardigan, amused despite himself how Adam tried to put it on. Even the little creatures liked to remind him that he was short, compared to other adults, but it had its perks. Like being able to walk while holding hands and still keep your back straight.

Adam tugged at the wool and admired the sleeves covering his hands with full sincerity.

“You are smaller than Erwin.”

_That was uncalled for._ Yes, evidently, and he was  _not_ small! Kittens were small. Levi was not.

Adam beamed tentatively, oblivious to Levi's annoyance. “I can wear this.”

His father's stuff was probably too large for Adam to even pretend he wore it; it was a good save, at least. Levi watched him a moment longer, that scrawny, white thing with eyes huge and dark as a maelstrom.

He was trying to imitate him. Children did that, it was their way of learning. It was in their genes. But to Adam, it was even more: he had difficulties relating to others, he struggled with self-expression and emotionality. This way of copying an appearance made it easier for him while allowing him to keep everything at his own pace.

It was also the first time Levi noticed him imitating anyone but Erwin.

“Looks good.”

Levi reached out and mussed up Adam's hair until it fell out of its neat sidepart – not quite his style, but damn well less like Erwin. Adam flinched, wrinkling his nose (not the ruffling-type, obviously), though his face crinkled pleasantly all the same.

Levi blew out the candle and stretched out on the couch while Adam carefully arranged himself on the footrest, his head pillowed on the cushion near Levi's hip. Levi's eyes drifted shut soon, still he could practically feel Adam staring at the ceiling, mulling over something only he quite understood.

So strange.

“Levi?”

Goddammit, no. Levi gave a low grunt, and when nothing followed and he had admitted to himself that Adam would never be able to rest if plagued by a question, he added drowsily: “Hm?”

“Is cherrywood any softer than other wood?”

It was so difficult to stay awake, even more so to form words. Levi felt his thoughts slipping the moment he had them, his head shutting down without asking his permission. “... No.”

“I see.”

He was on the verge of sleep then, so when Adam asked again, Levi wrote it off as nothing but imagination, not processing it in the least.

“Can cherrywood bleed?”

 

When Levi awoke, it was dark-gray all around him. His mouth was dry, his head felt a little better, even when his muscles were stiff and tense. Something cold and slightly moist was touching his chin, and he instantly slapped it away, instinctively recoiling from the unpleasant sensation.

Adam watched him, at least Levi assumed he was; his pupils were still adapting to the twilight, and the child's eyes were two dark pits, gaping black holes. It was an uncomfortable stare.

Levi sat up and pushed the urge to rub his chin aside, where he could still feel the touch of icy fingers. Adam had put the cardigan aside and now stood next to the couch, from where he'd poked Levi. His hand still lingered in the air.

It was unnatural for a child's fingers to be so cold and sweaty, especially since the flat was still heated and he could have put on the cardigan. Levi squinted at him. “You a'right?” He always slurred a little after waking up.

Adam seemed to remember his hand then, curling his fingers into a fist and rubbing his thumb over them. “You did not move.”

Levi was a very quiet sleeper; more than once in his schooldays, he'd been violently shaken awake by Isabel or even Farlan because his breathing had been too soft to hear. But they were the same as him, overly sensitive when someone showed no clear signs of life – Adam was not.

Maybe Erwin twitched like a dog in his sleep, that was why it had unsettled Adam to see so little movement. Though his clammy touch left Levi with an uneasy feeling... Perhaps the brat had watched TV last night instead of sleeping, and these hours weren't reserved for kid-friendly stuff. Could give you nightmares even during naps.

“Kinda. Want some tea t' go along with your snack?”

Changes of topic did _not_ need to be smooth with a migraine. Luckily, Adam was quickly distracted by playing the robot-game with a matchbox and the candle. Levi's eyes felt better already, so the light no longer stung that badly, but Adam was absolutely fascinated by the way the smoke seemed to burn once you relighted a candle you had just blown out, so they were stuck with this game until the matches were used up.

“Why does the smoke burn?”, Adam inquired after they had managed to move to the kitchen and Levi was rummaging through his selection of loose tea, sorting out those that contained caffeine. As much as he wanted gunpowder, Adam would demand the same tea, and that wouldn't do.

He had no fucking idea why that worked – science had never been his strong field, and he'd pretty much missed those years of school. Not that he couldn't have made an effort of catching up on that knowledge, but... it was embarrassing, and he simply didn't care enough.

He did make an effort of thinking of an explanation, though, but the doorbell interrupted them. Levi switched the kettle off and glanced at Adam. “' suspect we'll know soon.”

To his surprise, Adam stayed in the kitchen while Levi went to the door. Then again, the last run-in had been memorable enough.

Levi unhooked the chain and came face to collar with the pristine marvel of Erwin Rambo Smith, on his epic quest for his son.

Congratulations, princess located.

Levi saw no reason for politeness, especially since Erwin offered none himself, but when he stepped back to call Adam over, he felt that high-and-mighty-stare graze him instead.

“Oh my.” For someone of his stoicism, Erwin sounded incredibly dry.

Levi belatedly realized what this probably looked like – the silk robe, the dimmed room with the lonely candle, his disheveled appearance.

“Note that I don't seduce parents, least of all like this,” he hissed; it was a little disappointing when Erwin did not recoil like Levi had sprayed acid at him, which was something strictly heterosexual men liked to do when encountering something like a gay innuendo.

“Lucky me,” he drawled, then pushed past Levi with a charming implicitness that made the blood of the smaller man boil.

“Adam, I'm here.”

The boy scurried over at that – since he wasn't in shock now, he didn't greet Erwin as emotionally as yesterday, which seemed to be part of the politely reserved way they treated one another. Adam nodded a bit clumsily and took stance beside Erwin's leg. His hands were dutifully folded in front of his navel as he looked up to his father. “Can we stay for tea?”

_No._

“No.” Erwin spoke without hesitation, his eyes not leaving Levi. His brief mockery had passed, and now he regarded him with an expression that was hard to read, not only because of the lighting conditions.

He offered no explanation to Adam why they couldn't stay, nor did he ask what had driven the boy to arrange his way here. Parents didn't necessary value their kids' opinion, and perhaps he was putting the tongue-lashing off until they were in private. But if Adam was scared of being scolded, he kept it in remarkably well. He didn't seem to feel guilty at all, only went to retrieve his bag and put on his shoes.

“I would like a word with you.”

Erwin spoke like someone who was absolutely used to people obeying him. Anger prickled at Levi's neck, sending small, hot stings along his spine. “I'm on sick leave.” He would have said something more about people bossing him around in the privacy of his home and in his free time, but Adam was within earshot, and their previous disagreement had already frightened him.

Erwin didn't bat an eyelid. “Tomorrow, then.”

“That's Saturday.”

“So?”

“So 'no',” Levi all but snarled.

“Three o'clock is fine.”

Levi crossed his arms, his voice slipping into a low murmur that was a smooth and cool as the silk he wore. “Mr. Smith... I believe I spoke quite clearly.”

Erwin offered him an artificial smile with the barest flash of teeth. “You did. I'll meet you tomorrow, Mr. Mercer.”

This time, the little stings among his spine weren't anger. He was absently aware of Adam tugging at Erwin's trouser leg, his hair still sticking out like a thin, wiry halo. “That's not his name, Erwin.”

Erwin's eyes had once again left Levi, knowing fully that he dominated the situation, that he set its rules.

“It is. Come.”

 

Levi was feeling considerably better on Saturday. Maybe his body understood the importance of an efficient mind on this occasion.

How could this have happened...? And why. Why had Erwin dug that up, what use could it be to him? They had met yesterday, how could he have found that so quickly?

It was no use. Maybe it wasn't even a problem, if he just acknowledged that the other had pulled a shitty little trick on him. They could let the matter rest once it was clear who was the alpha. It irked Levi, to say the least, but if that petty revenge was all that Erwin wanted...

Though he suspected that this wasn't it. Not at all.

He was waiting outside on that Saturday, on one hand not wanting Erwin near his personal rooms anytime soon again and on the other having a smoke to calm his nerves. He'd been through worse; the only thing that ticked him off was that he couldn't read Erwin. This would be much easier if he had an idea what to expect, but...

There was a bus-stop near his block, and five minutes before three, the bus arrived. Public transport, how mundane. At least the fucker was on time.

So to say the least, it came as a surprise that Erwin wasn't alone – he'd brought Adam with him. The boy was nearly jogging to keep up with the stride of the man's long legs, and excitement painted small dots of redness on his pallid cheeks. Levi waited for them, squashing the urge to put out the cigarette in front of a child under his care. He wasn't working right now, and Erwin looked like the type who would be annoyed by smoke.

And he was. The subtle twitch of his nostrils immensely amused Levi.

“Glad you could make it,” he said, mostly to Adam. Erwin didn't seem like a very... daddy-dad, but maybe he was some kind of weekend-father. Considering the money he made, it seemed well possible.

Adam beamed at Levi, clearly unused to this. Maybe not so weekend-father after all. “Does that smoke burn, too?”

“It does. In your throat. Don't do it, really.”

Adam opened his mouth, likely to point out that Levi _was_ doing that forbidden thing, but Erwin cut him off. “We can go.”

Again with the commando-voice. Levi rolled his eyes, though it was an effort to tear his gaze from Erwin. The man set him on edge, as if he might do something sudden, something dangerous any minute. The tension he held, the way his eyes sometimes darted around to catch a detail, the way he never let Levi out of his sight... There was something predatory, and it put him on alert.

“Where?”

He was letting Erwin take the lead deliberately, just to see what he'd do. Levi suspected that Erwin would have asked them to leave the flat, but since they hadn't been there in the first place, it might take the wind out of his sails. Guys like Erwin wanted a field advantage. Levi wanted neutral ground.

Erwin's blue eyes scanned the environment, which gave Levi a short moment to appraise him. He had a symmetrical face and an athletic built to go along with his height, but he wasn't the conventional kind of handsome. His face was harsh, the blond brows thick and drawn, his nose had a slight bump – on the whole, he was all hard edges, though certainly not without a considerable attractiveness to that. Levi liked men who looked somewhat distinct, but so far, Erwin had never shut up long enough to let him forget that he was also a pretentious bastard.

“There's a gas station down the street. Should be enough.”

Levi had obviously wronged him, the guy _had_ a sense of humor. He scoffed as he ground out his cigarette, noting with a tinge of unease that most gas stations had video surveillance. This one did, too, and he wondered whether that was an indication for Erwin.

Luckily, Levi was more familiar with this part of town. He offered Erwin his interpretation of a professional smile, not trying too hard. “There's also a playground nearby – might not bore the shit out of Adam.”

Adam didn't care much for playgrounds, Levi knew. Apparently, Erwin didn't, because he seemed to gauge the distances and glanced down at the boy, who returned his look curiously. As usual, he wasn't dressed for playing outside, his hand still firmly bandaged. The hopeful undertone in his expression likely originated from the fact that he didn't know playgrounds here weren't actually different from the one outside the day-care center, and that playgrounds didn't magically become exciting if you brought your daddy along.

As it happened, it wasn't Levi's problem. He knew when he had scored a partial victory.

 

It was no wonder Adam was odd. And it was now apparent where he got it from.

Even off-duty, Levi couldn't let a child Adam's age walk so near busy traffic on his own, so he ended up taking his hand after all when Erwin made no move to do so, switching places so Adam was on the house-side of the pavement. This seemed to displease Erwin in some sort, he eventually fell back half a step. His glowering stare on Levi's back felt like he'd come under cross-hair, and considering the shit Erwin had pulled on him, it was unsettling.

The playground was a dreary, red-brown square of tar-paper with a low fence guarding the equipment. The sunny weather gave the chipped paint and the splodges of graffiti even something like a cheerful semblance; it was lively, though a lot of families seemed to have jumped at the opportunity to take their weekend-activities to a proper park or at least a bigger playground. The usual clusters of mothers had formed, somewhat awkwardly mixed with their matching – or precisely not matching – male partners. Playgrounds like this one at this time of the week were the melting-pot of single-parenthood and patchwork-families.

Which was why it was bound to draw some attention when two men arrived together. Levi let go of Adam's hand and wasn't surprised when the boy didn't move an inch. He stuck out here even more than he did at the center.

“Nice.”

Levi wasn't sure whether Erwin meant the place or the feat of moving them here.

“Better than a gas station.” Levi stuffed his cold hands into the pockets of his jacket, annoyed that he had to look up to Erwin. A few benches were still free because they were close to the street, its noise and exhaust fumes, and he sat down on one of them, forcing himself to ignore whatever germs lingered there. “So, you wanna talk?”

Naturally, Adam hadn't budged. Erwin gave him a look, though no encouraging shoulder-squeeze or a playful little shove. “Leave us a few minutes.”

Levi wouldn't have been surprised if he'd said _'As you were.'_ or flat out _'Dismissed!'_. While motivation usually only drew a blank stare out of Adam, the boy at least moved away, clearly used to obeying commands like these from his father.

Levi pursed his lips even as Erwin moved to sit beside him. He was doing so unexpectedly close – since Levi had already chosen to perch himself on the edge (in hope of a slightly cleaner surface there), there was no space to move away, and he wasn't going to give Erwin the satisfaction of having roused him.

It was probably for the best that their bench was at such a noisy place, because they surely had the keen attention of the female plenum, and it probably wondered right now whether they were gay or just shy.

“You're too close, Smith.” Levi narrowed his eyes. “If this is your way of collecting favors...”

“Hardly.” Erwin didn't look at him, but stared ahead. Adam had inched towards the slide, even though he clearly doubted he'd enjoy using it. Levi cast a short glance at Erwin's profile, remembering what Adam had mentioned about him not sleeping. He didn't look like it; however, there were tense lines around his eyes, not quite permanent wrinkles but not far from it either. He didn't look like a professional insomnia-sufferer.

“Your biography is somewhat special.” Erwin's piercing gaze moved to Levi then. He returned it with the same amount of glacial warmth. “Does it have anything to do with your current occupation?”

“You dug up shit to ask me _that_?” Levi revealed his anger just enough to mask an unpleasant feeling of uncertainty.

“You haven't answered me.”

“It has fucking nothing to do with anything. You're wasting my time, Smith.”

“'Mercer' is the name your mother took after she distanced herself from her family and before you were born. It comes as a surprise that you bear her maiden name when the relationship towards family was clearly strained. For you, though, it came with an amazing purification once you retook the name Ackerman.”

So he knew. It hadn't been a bluff, even when Levi had hoped Erwin simply had an abominably good pokerface. His hands tightened to fists in his pockets while his eyes followed Adam carefully climbing the slide. He was so slow the other kids got annoyed with him; not among the lines of movement disorder, but pretty clumsy in unfamiliar environments. Public playgrounds obviously qualified as such.

“Cop or common sadist?” His voice was level. Erwin was a few twenty years too late if he thought blackmailing him was that easy.

“Neither, actually. Was changing your name a part of the deal for sealing your criminal record without fulfilling the legal requirements first?”

Levi flashed him a smoldering look through lowered eyelashes. “Yes.”

“What else?”

At that, Levi leaned over to bring his mouth close to Erwin's ear, reveling in the subtle tension rising in the thick cords of muscle at the other's neck. _“Fuck you.”_

He had to hand it to Erwin, the bastard threw one of the women watching all too intently a non-committal smile that never reached his eyes. “Care to elaborate?”

“Shove that seesaw up your ass and see how far it goes – you can whip yourself with the swings or hang yourself from the slide on your dick for all I care, but _don't_ think I owe you any answers.”

Adam had skidded down the slide in slow-motion and opted for another go, likely because the other equipment required intense examination again. His brows were furrowed in deep concentration, which at least diverted his attention enough from his father receiving purred insults straight into his ear.

Erwin didn't react immediately. He smelled faintly of soap; no cologne, even though he was shaven impeccably, and of something more biting and sweetish, like acetone or fuel. Coming from him, it was odd. Levi had expected something ordinary yet expensive.

Erwin casually lifted his arm behind the backrest of the bench and dug his fingers sharply between the second and third vertebrae in Levi's nape. He managed not to flinch, but the pain was a short, numb stab, the touch itself harmless, intimate even.

“We agree that we don't want your heritage or what I'll call your... youthful transgressions to be known.” Erwin's voice was so low that Levi barely heard him over the traffic, and he cursed that softness for making it impossible to hear whether Erwin was affected in any way. The bastard probably knew, and he was masking everything he could, in every way he could.

“In return, do me a favor.”

Erwin released him, and Levi mustered a brief smirk. If Erwin had hoped he would flinch, he must be sorely disappointed right now. “So, you're a common sadist after all.”

“Not at all.” Erwin's face was as passive as ever when Levi straightened again, but his shoulders relaxed a fraction. So... That was his tell. Good to know. Those shitty eyebrows took up all the attention, and it was actually his body that betrayed him. “I ask one thing of you. If you agree, this matter is settled.”

Adam was down the slide again, but one of the other kids lost patience and shoved him so that he actually slid down on his butt instead of on his shoes. He hadn't gotten up yet when the other kid bumped into him, nearly sending them both to the ground.

“What makes you think you can trust me?”

There was a tinge of disapproval in Erwin's stare as he watched the children, though it vanished when Adam proceeded to take the matter into his own hands by confronting his... attacker.

“You weren't talkative during any of your hearings. Though it would have benefited you to give the names of your accomplices.”

Did Erwin have any idea what kind of treatment awaited someone being _talkative_ , especially in the Ackerman family? Obviously not. Then again, he was right on one thing: Levi would not have betrayed his friends, wouldn't have done it even if they hadn't exactly been friends. Being on his own also meant not dragging anyone else in, especially not for a mitigation of punishment.

Erwin seemed to gamble for the sheer possibility that Levi had this kind of loyalty – and still treasured it. He was either gutsy or pretty naive.

“You missed something.” This time, the rolling purr in his own voice surprised Levi a little. It had been too long since he'd played this kind of game, and he'd always been good at it: playing cat and mouse and not being entirely sure who was who. It was an illicit thrill, even now. “You're no accomplice of mine, Smith.”

The boy behind Adam had launched into an argument with full energy. Adam himself had drawn his head between his shoulders, but he hadn't backed down so far; usually, he avoided confrontation with silent retreat to a quiet corner. Only that a playground had no quiet corners, and the two persons he was familiar with were busy. Erwin's order to leave them alone for a while seemed absolute.

“That so.” The arrogance wafted between those few words like a heavy scent. “You are well-informed, then.”

Certainly not. Levi sneered nonetheless. “Fuck you, once and for all. Y're some goody two shoes, that's it.”

The smile Erwin gave him was barely visible. It didn't reach his eyes either, but it went just a little farther, touching his nostrils and easing the grim tension of his chin and lips a little. “That's a nice thing to say, Ackerman.”

It wasn't – it really wasn't, and yet he had seemed pleased, almost content for the fraction of a second. The impulse disappeared as quickly as it had come, leaving Levi no trace and surely no time to look deeper. “Do you agree?”

The boy had given Adam a little shove again, and Smith Junior lifted his uninjured hand to return it; this drew attention to the bandage. Curiosity instantly clawed at the other kid, and he pulled at Adam's hand to inspect it. They bowed their heads over the palm then, peeling gauze away, trying to get a glance underneath Erwin's immaculate art of wrapping a bandage. It didn't really work.

“Spit it out, then.”

This time, it was Erwin who leaned over, even though it meant that he laid his elbow on the backrest of the bench and subtly shifted his weight. He was no closer now, but it felt like it, and Levi was keenly aware of how little space there was between them, and that he would have liked more distance. For some reason, his compliance counted for Erwin; the information he had could well destroy the life Levi had built up, let alone cost him his job. In the very least, he could be a pain in the ass, and the trade-off for silence could prove horrendous.

Levi forced himself to remain calm and watch Erwin only from the corner of his eye while pretending to focus on Adam. He was talking; noticeably animated, even, probably describing his run-in with the bee and fudging just a few details. It was rare for him, who usually stuck to adults.

“If you are ever asked, don't speak of Adam. If anyone comes to see him or even pick him up, don't allow it. No matter whether you know that person, no matter which reasons are named. He must not leave with anyone. If it's unavoidable, contact me before anything else. And I require one word for an answer.”

It took Levi a moment to understand that the last statement no longer had to do with Erwin's conditions.

_What the hell?_

“Custody battle?”

Levi scoffed, but Erwin remained unfazed, seeing that it wasn't his answer. It was clear that he wouldn't let himself be diverted.

What choice did he even have? It sounded sick, but it didn't clash that much with the discretion Levi was obligated to keep anyway (though Erwin's requirements were stricter than the usual routine). It seemed pretty harmless, and yet Levi wondered why Erwin would have raked up his past if there was really nothing to it.

“Fine.”

He wanted a cigarette right now.

Erwin nodded and moved to get up from the bench, then seemed to realize that Adam had disappeared from the slide. For a moment, Levi could feel rather than see the tension in his body, steely, swiftly, like an animal ready to pounce.

Adam, though, had merely sought out one of the smaller seesaws, one of those that were planted on a thick metal spring so the children could rock back and forth. The other boy was still with him, showing off the art of sitting on the seesaw with his hands in the air with great flourish.

“I'm not too crazy about being stuck with you either, but you'll pull him out of that if you move. You can sit your ass down for ten more minutes, y'know.”

Playgrounds were nonsmoking-areas, and while Levi tended to ignore that often enough, as did the parents who visited here often, he did refrain from smoking here. And damn Erwin for even riling him up enough to want it.

Erwin hesitated just barely, then he sat. With a little more distance now, and one of the women shot him another curious glance.

“So, where's Adam's mom?” Levi didn't know whether he asked. He wouldn't have minded the silence, and it was none of his business, especially not on a weekend. Though he wondered whether Adam also called his mother by her first name.

“She's not here.” Erwin's tone indicated that he didn't wish to talk about it.

Good for him.

“Does he even know her?”

“She's not a prostitute that died of AIDS, if it's that what you mean.”

He had no right. Levi felt the impact of those words like a poorly aimed punch into his kidney, but nonetheless they were just that: words. Some words of reality, words that Erwin _thought_ he could use to pain him, just to make him shut up. He was obviously used to it, manipulating people by pushing their buttons, and he was artless enough to think that this dig would hurt Levi enough to turn him aggressive. He'd have the upper hand then, all calm and composed and entirely deviated from the topic of Adam's past.

Again, Erwin was twenty years too late with that tactic.

“For someone so tall, you're fucking quick to deal low blows. It's pathetic.”

Erwin chuckled quietly. It was a surprisingly rumbling sound that could have been as calculated as anything – oddly enough, it irritated Levi more than the nasty remark about his mother. He wasn't sure whether it was condescending or approving, and it annoyed him to no end.

“The less you know, the easier it will be to give nothing away.”

Levi snorted. “Smooth.”

“I was under the impression that we both don't prefer it that way.”

Levi dug around in his pocket for the lighter. “Flirting with me, aren't you?”

“That would be unwise.”

Either Erwin was a lot more open-minded than he let on and wasn't startled by the suggestion of gay flirting, or he had at least considered it. Having been around the first type for years, Levi recognized the latter easily.

Might explain why Adam's mom was 'not here'. Although Levi still blamed that on Erwin being such a self-important bastard.

“You're the one who wants me to _contact_ you if there's anything off. And your number's down.” At least in case that hadn't been fixed since yesterday.

Erwin paused for a moment, his face freezing all of its expression. For no apparent reason, it sent a chill of wariness down Levi's spine; his fingers inside his pocket curled tightly around the lighter.

Something warm grazed the back of his hand and slid down on his skin, joining the lighter in his pocket and nestling unobtrusively in the lining of his jacket. Levi forced his arm to remain motionless and at the same time keep the look of mild boredom on his face.

“If it's essential.”

Erwin's voice was closer and almost inaudible; fingertips that were too rough for someone of his standing grazed Levi's wrist, seemingly deliberate. Then Erwin was a towering shadow above him again, brushing a bit of dirt from his coat and smoothing out a tiny wrinkle from one of his sleeves.

Adam rushed over to attach himself to Erwin's trouser again, cheeks red from cool air and excitement. He gave the boy he'd been playing with a shy wave before tugging at the cloth. “Can we come again?”

There was a fleeting glimmer of affection in the steely blue of Erwin's eyes, so elusive that Levi rather recognized than actually saw it. And yet Erwin pointedly waited for Adam to let go of him until he answered in the same noncommittal tone: “We'll see.”

Adam obviously was in too high spirits to let that dampen his mood. He smiled at Levi, an unquestioning smile of delight that he had so far never aimed at anyone in the center. Adam smiled at his finished work or at pictures that fascinated him, but not at adults. Not like this.

Strange little creature. Really, really strange, and Levi still found himself smiling back.

“Take care.”

Adam nodded solemnly, his smile making room for that deadly serious expression again. “Yes.” Then: “I will see you?”

Levi closed his thumb over the object Erwin had slipped into his pocket. A small tickling sensation traveled up his arm, a slow, teasing reminder.

“Probably.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually got feedback - I'm so happy! People, this is seriously amazing.  
> I hope I didn't squeeze too much into this chapter, but I really wanted it to be good since you guys enjoyed the first one; it's probably confusing since the plot is beginning to show, but the pieces don't fit yet. But your estimations are still correct - Erwin is kind of a prick and he likes it.  
> Also, I'm late because "Shingeki! Kyojin Chuugakkou" butted in. Yes, thank you, Anime. Because I'm not slow enough as it is!  
> Levi's awfully cute, though.
> 
> Criticism and guesses are always welcome!


	3. Where there's smoke...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You have no idea what you're doing. You don't know how.”  
> Messing with Petra the way he had was a mistake, but Erwin hadn't seen it, simply overlooked the effect it had on his and Adam's life. It was a small blunder, yet it gave so much more away for Levi.  
> The expression in Erwin's face was odd. “You're good company, then.”

Levi arrived at work on Monday completely absorbed in his own thoughts – so he didn't notice.

The day-care center hadn't opened yet, and there was more than enough to prepare for the coming day. Eld sharpened crayons while skimming over the emails they had received over the weekend, sorting out what concerned their group while Levi cut out models for spring-themed handicraft-work later.

“So, Mrs. Cohen now wants all of her children tested on lactose intolerance and kindly reminds us to keep all kinds of dairy products away from them... Frankly, she demands that Marina shall not be present in a room with...” Eld leaned closer to make sure he hadn't missed a line. “... cheese, yoghurt, pudding and chocolate milk.”

“Soy milk's fine then?”

“No, but she anticipated that, so she sends us a list of forbidden foods, especially... ice cream.”

“This week is first-ice-cream-week.”

“Yes, and she asks us to transfer Marina to another group for that occasion. So she isn't in the same room with, you know-”

“Ask her cordially to fuck herself, then.”

“Fantastic. We should put that into our mailing list.”

Petra entered the group room at that, a sheaf of printouts tucked under her arm and a small candy bowl with folded slips of paper in the other hand. “I'm sure you guys have deliberate reasons, but we don't want them ganging up on us, so...” She held the bowl out to Eld since Levi had his hands full. “... come on, Lord Luck, find out when it's your group's turn with first-ice-cream.”

“Don't get your hopes up, Monday's already taken.” Gunther triumphantly waved the slip of paper through the open door like a carrot on a stick.

First-ice-cream-week was the one week in spring where the weather finally got warm enough to take the children into the city and treat them to ice-cream – it was always tied to stress and small quarrels with parents, but all in all, the little creatures loved it. It wasn't just about getting sweets: it was like a huge adventure to travel the city with their whole group in sunny weather, and that turned streets, arcades and lawns some of them already knew into terribly exciting places.

Needless to say, if it was first-ice-cream-week and the weather turned bad tomorrow, they were sort of fucked.

“Honestly...” Eld reached over to rummage around in the bowl when Petra abruptly drew it away.

“Eld, what's that.”

“What 'that'?”

“That on your hand.”

“That, Mrs. Ral, is commonly referred to as a ring. You know, you _are_ the woman here.”

“I'm aware.” Petra took a shallow breath, her eyes sparkling. “You're not the jewelry-type, though.”

“I'm not.” Eld's grin was spreading, too. “But this one's mandatory.”

Levi glanced over to see a thin silver ring on Eld's hand that had completely escaped his attention. Albeit judging by the immense content practically radiating off his co-worker in waves, he should have.

And judging by the look Petra threw him, he was expected to have noticed. “And you didn't say anything? You guys are so... rotten.” Though she couldn't manage to put on the stern face that was capable of pulling out the story of misdeeds out of almost every kid. “I'm happy for you.”

“It's nice,” Levi added somewhat awkwardly – he wasn't good at wishing people a happy birthday, let alone congratulate them on their engagement. Honestly, he wasn't even _used_ to people getting engaged, either they married or they didn't. And then they divorced or didn't.

Nonetheless, Eld beamed at him with happiness. People usually didn't do that, either.

“Congrats.” This time, Gunther poked more than his arm and the slip of paper through the door, regarding Eld doubtfully. “So... How come you wear that thing?”

Eld shrugged and finally captured one of the papers from the bowl, shooting Levi a glance to see whether he paid attention. “Anka gave it to me.”

“Let me get this straight, _she_ proposed to _you_?”

“Yeah.”

Since this was obviously becoming an important issue, Levi put the scissors aside and snatched the paper from Eld, the same moment Gunther plopped down on one of the remaining chairs. “She got down on her knees and-”

“That's progressive!” Petra actually grinned. “I don't see why a woman can't propose.”

Gunther snorted. “Oluo proposed to you, not the other way round.”

“Yes. I hinted, though. Continually. And considerably.”

“So – it's a man's job to propose, you agree with me then. What's Anka supposed to brag with now, especially to her girls club?”

Eld flashed Gunther a toothy grin and a distinct gesture with one non-beringed finger. “She doesn't need to.”

Gunther looked at Petra as his ally, but she merely shrugged, apparently not seeing his point and also unqualified since she was a woman herself. So his eyes found Levi next, who was unfolding the paper and, to be honest with himself, wasn't paying attention either.

“Levi, you agree?”

Once more, he was not short enough to go unnoticed. If something like 'not short enough' did exist.

“If she wanted shitty jewelry to wear, she would've gotten some. Obviously, she wants Eld to wear it and brag to whoever he cares.” Levi held up the unfolded paper with a slight scowl. “And your mojo sucks. You drew Thursday.”

This immediately stirred up a discussion between Eld and Gunther – if anything could draw more words out of Gunther than necessary, it was the desire to disagree with Eld, but as long as it remained on friendly terms, it was their business. Levi resumed his cutting, piling up colorful models in front of him when Petra tapped his shoulder.

“Can we talk for a minute?”

Despite himself, Levi felt a sudden stab of insecurity. Erwin hadn't told her... he couldn't have. He'd lose his leverage, and unless he'd suddenly discovered his hypocritical social conscience, there was absolutely no gain for him; and if Levi had read Erwin right, he was the kind of guy who never gave away more than absolutely necessary.

Levi merely nodded and put the scissors aside to follow Petra out of the group room. The center had already opened for the parents whose work started early, but there were only a few children already present and busy with games in the main room, and the regular program for today wouldn't start until about forty minutes. The kids paid them no attention, and yet Petra steered him to her office, shutting the door behind them.

The stab turned into a thick film of nausea at the sound. The office seemed awfully quiet without the murmur of high voices and the clutter of toys.

“Did Adam's father give you trouble?”

_Kind of, yes._

Levi knew he had to relax. Petra wasn't asking to be reassured, but if she suspected him to make light of anything, she'd never let it go. She was right to – that last Friday hadn't been one to show up in the documentation.

“It worked out.” That was as close to the truth as Levi could make it. Petra eyed him a moment longer, then sighed and smiled at him. It reminded Levi uncomfortably on how easy he could lie to people, even people who didn't trust him as much as Petra.

“Good. I still might have to invite him for some plain words, though-”

“He won't come.” That much was pretty clear – Erwin didn't give a shit what the nursemaid-club wanted from him, or how they planned to get it.

Petra frowned, glancing at the telephone as if it quietly agreed with her on something. “That's what I'm talking about, yes. His behavior is bordering on unjustifiable if anything serious should happen, and the center could be made responsible for any harm done because of his lack of cooperation. Eld and I have been over that on Friday, but you were sick and I thought it could wait until you recovered till I asked for your opinion.” Her gaze landed on him again, and although he was calmer now, Levi felt uncomfortable under that stare. “Maybe it would be for the best if I ask Mr. Smith to move Adam to another day-care center. This might not be the best place for Adam... Or for his father.”

Levi was fairly sure Erwin hadn't considered the possibility of being confronted with a fait accompli – truth to be told, he himself hadn't thought of it either. It gave him pause.

He'd be rid of the deal Erwin had bullied him into without having to do more than encourage Petra's concern. The man was dangerous, and his carelessness was his own fault, nothing that could redound upon Levi. He could gather that Petra had already tried to sort this out on her own, and in terms of responsibility, she was right to doubt. This could all be over by the end of the month, much sooner if Erwin was focused on not causing any stir; and that seemed to be exactly his intention.

Levi's fingers ran over the smooth plastic in the pocket of his jeans. He'd meant to drop the pager Erwin had given him into his locker and forget about it as soon as possible, but Eld had headed him off, and they _had_ made a deal.

What really gave him pause was Adam.

The boy had already misinterpreted Levi's sick day as a personal rejection – likely because Erwin had miraculously ticked Levi off enough to launch into an argument in front of the boy. As easily as he could persuade himself that Adam would be just fine somewhere else, he wasn't sure that it was correct.

He might not be naturally gifted with children, but he was here to try his best, and that included making decisions in their best interest, not his own.

“Levi?” Petra regarded him with slightly raised eyebrows.

For fuck's sake... He could sound Adam out a little and then merrily suggest that the name Smith should indeed be removed from his sphere of authority. That would agree with both his professional and, as Erwin had put it so nicely, his criminal conscience.

“I can't assess him. Adam, that is.” Levi couldn't help sounding gruff. He hadn't exactly wasted his golden opportunity yet, but it sure felt like it. “If it's something that's got a day or two time...”

“Have you ever known me to rush my fences?” Petra winked at him, and Levi knew she was probably referring to the banter about marriage, albeit he only managed a thin nod at that. He had never been good at smiling on cue, least of all somewhat convincingly.

“Are we done?”

Petra nodded and opened the door for him, and the comforting wall of noise slammed against the both of them. Levi caught sight of Eld standing waist-deep in little girls admiring his ring and Gunther as his counterpart, the last bastion of male estrangement.

Petra followed his gaze and smiled, though the expression was followed by a sigh immediately. “So, Thursday. Do you happen to know whether Adam's got any kind of food intolerance? I'm not so sure anymore whether his father just didn't care to list them.”

Considering the job Erwin had made of wrapping Adam's hand in a bandage safe enough for hours of gymnastics, Levi doubted it. “He knows the synthesis of vitamin B12 and its uses for the metabolism – he's probably pretty aware of the stuff he can't stomach, too.”

“Maybe.” The look Petra gave him was odd, almost wistful.

“But he's still a child, no matter how mature he might seem. We mustn't ever forget that.”

Erwin apparently had. And for a treacherous moment, Levi knew he himself had, too.

 

When Adam arrived that day in the small group of other kids, the shadows beneath his eyes had eased a little, but he was pale and quiet again – his flushed cheeks and vivid eyes from the weekend were a memory, it seemed.

The bandage was gone now, replaced by an ordinary band-aid in his palm that he tried to conserve when washing his hands. Rico examined his hand closely when they met in front of the sink before breakfast, and Levi could practically hear the scales tilt. Rico was nothing if not scrupulous with things she'd allowed others to teach her.

“Can you even clean your hand like that?”

She pointed at the band-aid, and Adam stared into his palm. Naturally, they held up the whole queue, and every other kid in the washroom wasn't too hungry to curiously follow this debate – Adam was a model child, so anyone questioning him was rare. Levi stifled a groan. “Get a move on, please. The others are waiting.”

Rico glared at him with all the intensity of her inquisitive spirit. “You said that dirty hands can make one sick, that's why we wash them. What if Adam doesn't wash his?”

Who would have thought that basic hygiene lessons could bite him in the ass. “We won't find out, because we all wash our hands before a meal. So if you could-”

“What if the band-aid falls off?”

To make everything worse, Adam seemed to have discovered his taste for stubbornness, too. Levi could see how uncomfortable he was, being stared at by so many kids, with Rico cornering him (ironically, not even out of spite) and an adult seemingly dissatisfied with him, and it was starting to rile him.

“If it does, I'll give you a new one. Sound good?”

Adam shook his head, his lips pressed together in a white line. The other little creatures in the queue behind him immediately sensed when a worker was distracted, jumping about, shoving each other and generally finding quick ways to cure their boredom – the resulting tumult was already coming up, and on a Monday morning, Levi couldn't allow his control over the situation to slip. The children would go beside themselves all day if he made that mistake, and it would fuck up the entire schedule.

“Adam, wash your hands now, _both_ of them.” Levi raised his voice over the increasing volume and turned around to give some of the little creatures a glare, which at least put some of them back on track.

When he shifted his attention back to the sink, Adam hadn't moved an inch; the boy's face had scrunched up even more, like he was trying to draw it into himself.

Levi knew that any sign of annoyance he showed would worsen that, but it was admittedly... fucking hard. Petra was right: this was not the place Adam needed, he needed something quiet, patient, with a higher child-worker ratio and... whatever.

“Adam, wait for me in the cloakroom. Rico, wash your hands.”

The washroom immediately feel silent – nobody wanted to incur the thunderbolt of 'serious talk' on oneself, now that Adam had already evoked it. Rico opened her mouth, confusion and guilt mixing on her face ever so suddenly, but Adam had already ghosted past her.

It took Levi a few more minutes to herd his part of the group to the tables and their respective chairs, and by the time they had completed their pre-meal-rituals, he had half a mind to call Erwin and make his damned ears bleed.

Aside from the fact that he _couldn't_ evencall him.

It wasn't unusual that children were in a somewhat troubled mood on Monday, thoughts still lingering at the weekend, possible at arguments between their parents, with their siblings and whatever stress some of them already had. Just that Adam was always different, always aloof of such banalities and always... strange.

“Did Petra talk to you yet?”, Eld asked casually when every kid was finally settled and eating more or less properly. He was guarding his cup of coffee with eagle eyes and absentmindedly toying with the plain ring on his finger, as if to revel in the fact that it was there.

Levi briefly closed his eyes, forcing back curses that would need to wait until he was outside. He wanted a smoke, and he wasn't likely to get one soon.

“I'm on it.”

He rose from his chair to go to Adam.

 

The cloakroom was always a little messy – it was a given with kids, and jackets slipped from the hooks all the time, especially the thin ones for this weather, puddle suits took up room, bags got stuffed into corners or pushed off from the bench, shoes got kicked around. In the general mess surrounding the coat rack, at first sight Adam seemed like just another piece of clothing dumped here to eventually get picked up later. On the bench, half-tucked into the jackets, scarfs and pants hanging there, he looked like he might melt into them.

Considering how little space there already was for a child to sit, Levi would rather have crouched in front of Adam, but he knew by now that the boy wasn't comfortable with forced eye-contact. Grimacing to himself, Levi perched himself on the edge of the bench, feeling it creak under his weight while dirty, greasy cloth brushed the nape of his neck.

Well, it _was_ part of the job.

Adam shrunk a little farther into the jackets as soon as Levi sat down beside him. He had folded his hands, the injured one beneath the other as if to protect it and the so very important band-aid. Though Levi began to suspect that he didn't care for it that much – he was cornered, and now he was stonewalling until his conversational partner lost interest, as usual.

“You need to wash your hands before a meal. The band-aid's not going to come off from that.” And then there was the tiring lecture Levi _had_ to give.

Adam sunk a little deeper into the coat rack.

“Does your palm itch?”

More silence. Levi inspected a few dry crumbs of earth on the ground. “That was a question, Adam.”

The boy shrugged, which was likely a 'no'; kids healed fast, so maybe that really was all there was to it.

“Did Erwin give you the band-aid?”

Levi remembered that it was a plain one, no child-friendly motives or cheery colors, and after meeting Erwin, that would have given him the creeps anyway. Adam nodded.

“Did he tell you not to lose it?”

That got him no reaction, which Levi interpreted as Erwin saying nothing on the matter – he'd probably deemed it unnecessary with a kid not very fond of rough games and sports. And Adam wasn't that dependent on instructions either, so Levi didn't get why he'd become all stubborn over that.

Unless of course, Adam had his own way of seeing it. Levi carefully rubbed his temples and briefly considered what it must mean to a little creature if someone as reserved as Erwin personally put on a band-aid – in that case, it absolutely did _not_ do to have it replaced by a childcare-worker with some shabby bit of plastic.

This kind of problem might occur in any kind of day-care, that much was for certain. Levi dropped his hands into his lap and looked towards the bathroom. “I'll help you wash your hands so the band-aid doesn't come off, and you join breakfast, because I'm pretty sure Erwin told you to eat properly.”

Adam turned his head a little, his dark eyes wide and oddly strained. Shy. He slid off the bench, coats rustling with his movement, and trudged towards the bathroom. His ears stood out with a nice pink glow between the strands of his neatly combed hair. “Can we play the robot-game...?”

Levi made sure he didn't groan when he got up – he was sure the planks of the bench were engraved in his ass by now, and by the sound of it, someone was having a fit over a piece of kiwi fruit, so Eld probably didn't appreciate Levi not being available. Still, he offered Adam a wry smile. “Nice try... My hands are clean. Make sure you watch, though, because frankly, you're a big boy. You can handle the bathroom without help, but not everybody can.”

While Adam didn't seem flattered to be referred as a 'big boy' (he was small and thin as a twig, yes), at least he didn't duck again. Embarrassment still dotted his cheeks with uneven redness, and Levi decided to make short work of what might be his only chance today to get a quiet moment with little Smith.

“Hey, Adam,” he remarked casually as he followed the boy to the sink and crouched down to reach around him. Adam, who already held his hands over the basin, looked at him in the mirror instead of turning around. His unharmed palm hovered beneath the soap dispenser.

“Can I come to your house today?”

Judging by the way Adam promptly sloshed liquid soap over his wrist, that wasn't a question he had ever been asked by another kid here, let alone an adult. And judging by his slightly open mouth and his almost comically widened eyes, he had no idea how to respond either.

As Levi carefully rubbed soap around the band-aid, though, the flush of embarrassment on Adam's cheeks was beginning to look more and more like carefully dosed delight.

 

Eld agreed to tidying up the group room alone that afternoon, and Levi could tell he wasn't taking the decision about Adam's future lightly either. However, the events of his own weekend probably took up a good part of his concentration as well, so he didn't argue, and Levi didn't blame him for it. Some people deserved to get negligibilities like lasting partnerships and profound happiness for free, at least occasionally.

Also, Levi didn't feel like being part of the proposal-discussion between Eld, Gunther and Petra again – in moments like these, there was the paranoid fear that they might notice he wasn't like them, that to him, fussing over the flower arrangement or the bachelor party was as alien as debating over astrophysics or cold sore. Hell, he'd even feel more comfortable if they spoke about outdoor sex instead of some sociocultural shit that you apparently had to know if you originated from the middle-class.

The taxi the small group, and among them Adam, usually took arrived around noon. It was a generic van whose seats weren't completely taken, complete with booster seats and trashy suncatchers. It only needed a gentle reminder to the driver about last Friday to get him to agree with Levi that giving him a ride wouldn't be a problem, especially since nobody doubted the purity of his motives.

Ah, the irony.

Adam was positively jittery about bringing someone home, which confirmed Levi's suspicion that this was completely new to him. When they waited in the cloakroom for the other children to put on their jackets and outdoor shoes, he even clutched at Levi's leg – which was fine if you were as tall as Erwin, but somewhat awkward when you weren't and those hands suddenly were decidedly too high on his thigh, and Levi had to move away. Fortunately, Adam accepted it without open distress; Levi didn't feel like explaining to him why it was not appropriate to have little hands pawing near his crotch.

Aside from Adam, none of the kids taking that taxi were in Levi's group, so they considered it their duty to turn the ride home into a sight-seeing tour, occasionally mixed with pointed inquiries: be it that _he_ was ever asked by his girlfriend to marry him, would he insist on wearing the dress, and if he did, could he alter it into a space-suit with integrated lightsabers?

Levi knew that Erwin would catch him off guard again if he wasn't prepared for their meeting, but concentrating on the things to come proved impossible with a bunch of kids chattering at the same time.

Minus Adam, of course. Not the chatty type. If anything, he patiently waited for his turn, which, in a van full of energetic children, simply would never come. He eventually reached over to tug at Levi's sleeve, a touch so light that it almost went unnoticed after a normal workday of sharp pulls and determined yanks.

“We're here.”

_Oh joy._

Adam was among the last children in the taxi, though the part of town where he got off was sort of mediocre; Levi had expected a fancy single-family house in the flowery outskirts, where everyone kept their lawns trimmed accurate to a millimeter and met on Saturdays to chat about homemade chutneys and rose growing. Maybe Erwin wasn't the neighbor-type – a single father drew a lot of attention in those streets anyway.

This part of town was newly developed, the flats almost painfully modern and so brand-new that Levi wasn't completely sure whether the concrete had really hardened already. There were square holes in the pavement where trees would eventually be fitted in, probably cut square as well. Not even the blue sky and the bright sunshine could soften the sharp edges of the buildings and their smooth, glassy surfaces.

And where the force of nature failed, Erwin Smith missed the mark by miles.

He wasn't as obvious as to frown or grimace at the sight of Levi climbing out of the van, but it was a safe bet that he wasn't pleased either. In the midst of people scurrying around and their air of bustle, Erwin was strangely unmoving and almost serene, as if the ton-weight of his undivided attention could not be disturbed by anything.

It was a stare to grow uncomfortable under, though under less formal circumstances, Levi knew undivided attention could prove quite... intense. He was also willing to bet that Erwin could give it to somebody properly.

Levi didn't struggle with the way those thoughts occasionally came up around equally untouchable people, whether they were aimed at newly-engaged Eld, some snappy father or, in this case, at a bastard like Erwin Smith. Some part of him was obviously masochistic and took pleasure in the fantasy, and the mind was free after all.

“Mr. Smith.” Levi didn't offer his hand, and he had the feeling Erwin might have refused it anyway. Except the fucker wasn't that obvious about his dismay, at least not in front of his son.

“Mr. Ackerman.” He didn't bother sounding happy, either. “To whom do I owe this honor?”

Adam joined his favorite leg and received a nod of greeting, briefly making Levi wonder whether that was some kind of command. He also noticed for the first time that Erwin held a commonly used plastic bag, probably grocery-shopping; there was a supermarket nearby, but for some reason, he struck Levi as the kind of person to simply bite a chunk out of the bathroom tiles for breakfast. No idea why.

“To yourself.” Levi produced an unfriendly smile. “I asked Adam whether it was alright to tag along, though.”

At that, Adam smiled up at Erwin (less unfriendly, mind you) the innocent way only children could, that irritating mug that suddenly made you forgive whatever shit they had just pulled on you. Levi was fond of little creatures, but nature had to have found a reason why you didn't simply kill them sometimes. “I said yes,” Adam pointed out, as if that wasn't obvious.

Apparently, the smile worked on Erwin, too. He fixed his eyes on Levi again, piercing blue saying: 'You win this time.'

“I don't want to hold you up, so how about we find a cafe and get to the point of your visit?”

Again, Erwin tried to dodge places where they'd possibly be alone. Levi had let him do that last time, because he'd been in the weaker position then with the stuff Erwin had dug up about him looming over the whole deal. But today he was paying a visit in a somewhat official capacity, so Erwin wasn't calling the shots.

“Don't mind me, I'm sure you're eager to get home.” Levi glanced at Adam for good measure. “You hungry?”

Adam was always stupidly polite and waiting to be asked before voicing his needs, but his nod was vigorous by his standards, and he cast a hopeful look up at Erwin. Beneath that hope, Levi caught a glimpse of something... thoughtful; speculative and aloof, an expression he'd seen on Isabel when she faced strange men, sometimes even when she was alone with him and Farlan.

Talk about creepiness being inheritable.

Erwin's jaw was set. “Be my guest, then.”

Levi shoved a small, brazen grin his way. “I was planning to.”

 

Dropping in on Chez Smith wasn't much of an event: at least not if you expected it to be any cozier than the whole neighborhood.

Without even reading that kind of magazine, Levi was fairly sure that the interior could be found 1:1 in a glossy about modern living, from the ridiculous photographs plastered over the walls to the stainless steel of the kitchen island and the smooth whiteness of the PVC flooring. It didn't look like a place where a preschool kid lived – no scattered toys, no clumsy, colorful pictures, no muddy shoes or marks on the door frame. If Levi hadn't known that Adam was familiar with these rooms, he wouldn't have thought that this was actually his home.

Cheerless bit of shit. And people said _his_ flat was drab.

Erwin clearly wanted him gone as soon as possible, but since this was Adam's first time bringing someone over, he carefully led Levi through the rooms – information was his anchor, and giving a tour eased the situation for him. The floor-heating in the bathroom especially fascinated him, and he pointed out the 'paths' of pipes beneath the tiles as well as the filter for the hard water; apparently, decalcification was interesting as hell.

Levi could hear Erwin rummaging around in the kitchen, though it sounded little like actual cooking. Even the bathroom was impersonal (as a responsible adult, Erwin didn't leave his razor or aftershave in sight), and the room he and Adam shared was probably the same. Levi was curious nonetheless, but Adam had a bunch of odd questions about the process of baking ceramic and those tiles. He seemed to like the idea that the day-care-groups sometimes worked with clay as well, and Levi could practically see the products of that project: all those chunky snails and cats and butterflies, and right in the middle a neat stack of bathroom-tiles, courtesy of Adam Smith.

So strange.

Erwin appeared in the doorway, as if he had sensed a disrespectful thought. “Do you want lunch?”

Hospitality at its finest. Levi, ever the graceful guest himself, shrugged. “I guess.”

Since the kitchen wasn't a separate room, but tucked into the corner of the spacious living room, the feel wasn't any different from the rest of the place. A shelf that was probably meant for impressive and highly useless dinnerware was piled with books out of a child's reach, though if Erwin kept his porn in the kitchen, Levi had made some seriously wrong assumptions about his character.

Lunch was... well, impressive. If you were impressed by pasta salad, that was. Erwin seemed to be a great fan of cutting each and everything up and chucking it into a bowl with cold pasta and some store-bought sauce. Levi hadn't thought anything on this planet could make _him_ feel like a kitchen fairy, but Smith seemed to achieve the unachievable.

Aside from the antipathy Levi harbored, something was off here. Adam had probably used more words in his explanations than he had all day in normal interaction, but Erwin and he hadn't spoken much: no questions about Adam's activities so far, no banter, in fact nothing that indicated that those two people even knew a lot about each other. Adam liked Erwin, that much was clear, and yet he never referred to him as 'daddy' or any term of endearment; and even Levi, who didn't think of himself as all that adorable (preferably not adorable at all), got showered in those.

If Levi had been as eloquent as Petra, he would have found a way to tactfully suggest some kind of parent-child-therapy. As it happened, he was eloquent as shit, and Erwin got on his nerves with everything he did. Even the way he dumped that melee of pasta, greenery and tofu-roadkill on a plate annoyed Levi.

“Old family recipe?”, he quipped, and Erwin shot him a look that was so bland it almost neutralized Levi's first three layers of skin.

“Proteins are good for your growth,” Adam put in dutifully, and Erwin mildly arched his eyebrows at Levi.

Smug bastard.

“I don't think I'll grow any more.” Levi eyed the mixture on the plate without much appeal. “Though it certainly looks like it might do the trick.” In other words, it looked like it might be radioactive and do all kinds of things to his body.

Erwin ignored that undertone and dumped another load of salad onto the plate before handing it to Levi. “Then it can't hurt to try.”

Levi thought it also couldn't hurt to try gagging Erwin with this shit and gouge out his eyes with the salad servers. If anything, he found the thought entertaining.

Adam was seated beside him on something like a fancy bar stool – apparently, this flat was just too modern for a normal kitchen table, so the meals were meant to be eaten at the kitchen island while you enjoyed the panorama of the prim neighborhood. Like a diner, really, only so much classier.

Even greasy diner food usually looked better than this, though. If this was the stuff Erwin fed his son, it was no wonder Adam was so scraggy. It was like Erwin had read that kids liked pasta and should eat vegetables, then had chosen to combine those pearls of wisdom. Adam was handed a plate with a smaller portion of his own without so much as a flinch, so he seemed to be used to it.

“So what's your job?”

Another thing Adam had never mentioned, though that was forgivable at his age; albeit Levi suspected that he was mature enough to know where his father went to work. Obviously something that allowed Erwin to be home at this time of the day.

Erwin's eyelids drooped just slightly, shielding his blue eyes with lashes that weren't remarkably long or curved, but blond as his hair on the tips. It seemed like a calculating move, if it hadn't been for his unsmiling mouth and tense jaw and the plain v-neck-sweater that only subtly highlighted his built.

Levi didn't like him, and he was sure he never would. But he wanted him. He'd always had a penchant for men taller than him, stronger than him, older than him, prettier than him, because none of those assets mattered once Levi had turned their heads. It was an unbidden thought that if Adam was transferred, then he could.

Levi frowned. The fucker had blackmailed him, and _succeeded_. He really didn't need to grace him with any more attention.

“I'm an IT-consultant,” Erwin said smoothly. It told Levi next to nothing, and he had the distinct feeling that this was no accident. Of course, Erwin didn't elaborate as he handed Adam a glass of mineral water and threw Levi a questioning glance while raising his remarkable eyebrows. He could probably do weight-lifting with those things.

“It's boring,” Adam put in, unusually frank. Levi didn't even try to suppress a smirk as he graciously allowed Erwin to pour him water as well. “I'll bet. What are you going to do when you're older?”

Adam stared blankly. “I will go to school.”

Levi didn't know whether the boy had misunderstood him on purpose or simply had no high-flying dreams to name; deciding that he didn't need to find out, Levi busied himself with smalltalk again. Not his best subject, but it'd have to do. “Looking forward to that?”

Adam nodded and gazed expectantly up at him, then back to his plate and ultimately back to Erwin, who hadn't yet sat down and scrolled through something on his phone. Levi noticed that he also hadn't gotten a plate for himself.

He was assiduous enough to be home now and make lunch for the little creature, but he didn't actually eat together with him? What was wrong with his brain, or did he originate from a family _that_ sterile?

Adam evidently usually ate on his own, and now the presence of his group-worker confused him – the shared meals in the center were started together with the same rituals, and Adam had adopted the routine nicely. No one would have guessed he wasn't used to them.

“Are you gonna join us or not?” Levi sounded a lot unfriendlier than he'd intended. Then again, no, that was just fine. He'd already cut back on the 'bastard' at the end of the sentence.

“We can talk afterwards,” Levi added silkily; simply making sure Erwin didn't forget that this was no courtesy call.

Erwin was as stoic about that hint as he probably would have been if asked for his recipe, and yet he set another place, taking his seat opposite of Levi and Adam with his back to the windows. Aside from that, he was unreadable.

Levi didn't like how that stirred his interest again. Erwin was the kind of person who made others vie for his undivided attention, he had that kind of presence that immediately appealed to those weaker than him. And Levi would not be _weaker_.

Erwin looked up to meet his eyes, the blue of his iris both cold and thrilling. “Enjoy your meal.”

Levi looked down on his plate, conveniently breaking the eye-contact. “I'll try to.”

 

The taste of that pasta salad was... expandable, but not revolting, at least for someone whose job required a lessened sense of disgust. Adam ate slowly, seemingly more interested in picking apart the vegetables and then chewing on them forever. He didn't chatter – he never did – and he didn't seem to mind the lack of adult conversation. When he spoke up, it was generally a seemingly disconnected question aimed at Levi concerning odd aspects of natural science. Erwin made no move to help Levi with those, only joining the conversation once when Adam asked him about a short-story Erwin had apparently read to him. Given their... politely reserved relationship, Levi couldn't picture Erwin reading to a kid, but from what he'd gathered, it hadn't been a book meant for children anyway.

Give the brat nightmares about plants having a mind of their own, why wouldn't he.

Levi was glad Erwin hadn't also whipped up some horror-version of a dessert – then again, there hadn't been any meat in the pasta-salad (it had to be about the only edible article that _hadn't_ made it) and Adam didn't fancy chocolate much, so maybe that was some kind of health-obsession. Hopefully, Eld knew what he had bargained for.

“Mind if I use your balcony?”

Levi was desperate for something unhealthy now, though to his amusement, Erwin didn't seem to catch on immediately and raised his eyebrows at him. “What for?”

Did the man think he was going to take a shit there or what? Levi huffed quietly and fumbled for the pack of cigarettes in his pocket. “To commit unspeakable sh-... stuff.”

Adam looked curious at that, so Levi shot him a stern glare. “Don't do it.”

“Do what?”

“Just don't.”

Luckily, Erwin had finally gotten the hint; maybe he wasn't that bright at all, just good at pretending he was.

“If you're done eating, brush your teeth and go to sleep.”

No almost-four-year-old on this earth would welcome the order to take a nap, and Levi was almost relieved when Adam made a face. “I'm not tired.” His face unwrinkled a little with hope. “Since I have a guest...?”

Levi hadn't intended to stay longer than necessary, and he was pretty sure Erwin didn't want him to, either. Still, the brightening in Adam's gaze told him clearly that he had given the boy a wrong impression and it was shitty appropriate to feel guilty about that.

To his admitted surprise, Erwin beat him to it. “Mr. Ackerman needs to get back to work; you know some children stay until afternoon.”

While that was usually true, Erwin had to be aware he was lying now. Adam's face fell, which was better than the blankness Levi would have received if he'd told the boy why he'd actually come. Damn the bastard for that save, nonetheless.

“Will you be here in three minutes?”, Adam asked solemnly.

The dental hygiene was commendable. Levi wasn't sure he could finish that talk within three minutes, and he had half a mind to make it a job of thirty seconds. Sounded stupidly sexual, but that tended to happen when he ran low on nicotine.

Levi nodded. “Sure.” As long as Erwin didn't use his opportunity and tried to throw him from the balcony; he'd find that a harder task than expected anyway.

Adam vanished into the bathroom, and Levi waited until he heard water running, then opened the glass sliding door leading out to the balcony. Considering how new the complex was, the concrete structure sure resembled the shabby flower-box-thing Levi knew from his own home, and the air was hardly better in this part of town. The sunshine was welcome enough, even for someone who didn't care much for basking in it. There were no chairs outside, so obviously Erwin wasn't into it, either.

Levi fished his pack of cigarettes out, now that Adam wouldn't watch, and he knocked against the plastic to take one out, glancing sideways at Erwin.

“Want one?”

It was more of a rhetorical offering, seeing as Erwin seemed entirely virtuous, so Levi was surprised when the man actually hesitated for the fraction of a second. It was hardly noticeable, but you didn't _unlearn_ to read people; not when you had previously learned it the way Levi had.

“No, thank you,” Erwin said firmly. Levi heard the absence of an affronted _'I don't smoke, of course'_ and curled the corner of his mouth while lighting the tip of the cigarette.

“Just out of curiosity... Did you do background checks of the whole staff?” He didn't wait for a reply because he knew Erwin would not be baited so easily. “If you did, I hope you found something to blackmail Mrs. Ral as well, because your elusiveness has seriously pissed her off.”

“Is that so.” Erwin didn't sound impressed, but his expression was vacant. He was thinking. “And what's your gain?”

Levi blew smoke into the warming air. “It's my job.”

He didn't miss the way Erwin's eyes sharpened, and he made sure to show him he hadn't with a languid smirk. “Looking after brats, that is. If you don't give a shit, find another day-care center for Adam. If you do, better get in touch with Mrs. Ral before she loses patience.”

Come to think of it, Erwin's home was quite far from Adam's current place, and it wouldn't be difficult to find a day-care much closer, preferably in this quarter and without the hassle of a taxi-service. Levi remembered that Adam's papers had not listed any other kind of childcare before, so why Erwin had chosen one nearly at the other side of town was beyond him. They weren't _that_ good.

An unpleasant thought struck Levi, and he turned to Erwin, who seemed to be idly watching traffic – he wasn't fooled. “Why did you send Adam there at all, did that have anything t'do with me?”

Erwin met his question with the hint of a sneer, the height difference between them adding to the effect. “Don't take yourself so seriously.”

Levi glanced at the empty living-room, then took a step towards Erwin so they no longer kept the polite distance of two strangers. He hadn't expected his visit to have much impact on the other, but the open indifference made something behind his breastbone boil with anger. The balcony balustrade in his back left no room to step away, and he had to lift his head to meet Erwin's gaze. Still, Levi sensed that he was putting the other to the test as well: the lack of distance, the burning cigarette uncomfortably close to the smooth cotton of his sweater, combined with the challenge of not being the first to avert his eyes.

For a man working with computers, Erwin had remarkably rough knuckles. Levi knew that if he remarked on that, Erwin would have a perfectly sensible explanation, probably combined with some kind of harmless sport that also justified his muscular built.

“You have no idea what you're doing. You don't know how.”

Messing with Petra the way he had was a mistake, but Erwin hadn't seen it, simply overlooked the effect it had on his and Adam's life. It was a small blunder, yet it gave so much more away for Levi.

The expression in Erwin's face was odd. “You're good company, then.”

Maybe he was just guessing; maybe he actually had some abstruse way of sensing that Levi had felt alien when his co-workers had suddenly brought up the endless facets of 'perfectly normal experiences'. It didn't matter, and it was useless to deny.

They were both lying through their teeth, and they knew how to; but it was exhausting, abominably so after a while. Levi jammed his cigarette between his lips when he felt his throat go uncomfortably dry, inhaling smoke to calm the sudden sparks of longing spreading beneath his skin. It didn't work. Not at all.

Especially not with Erwin's gaze fixed on the small slit between his lips where smoke was seeping out, like he couldn't tear himself away from that sight. Apparently having quit smoking with a certain effort before, it was well possible that his intense attention was only directed at an old craving that refused to die yet. Levi couldn't read that part of him, but when he carefully removed the cigarette from between his lips like it might break, the slightest shudder made the wisps of Erwin's neatly combed hair tremble, and the muscles of his throat contracted, as if his mouth had run as dry as Levi's had.

Answered that question. Gave room to hundreds more. Levi only cared about one of them, though.

Could he risk this?

Erwin's fingers brushed along the waistband of Levi's jeans, barely a flick of his hand that was casual, testing, a phantom of the strength he could surely put in his grip. Levi leaned in just a little in answer, wishing to confirm that because damn, he couldn't stand hesitation or gentleness with strangers, and Erwin didn't fool him with his sophisticated airs: he was rough.

Erwin's long fingers grabbed his hips in answer, the pressure dug the denim into Levi's skin and sent a flash of arousal through his gut. _Yes_. He dug his hand into the fabric of Erwin's sweater and pulled him down, eager for the contact of naked skin and enamored with the idea of tainting Erwin's prim facade with the taste of smoke and ashes. _Yes. Yes._

“Levi...?”

Erwin's grip instantly loosened, and he straightened slowly, knowing that abrupt moves would draw attention. Levi let go and took a step to the side so he reappeared behind Erwin, displeased with a short feeling of weakness in his knees. For fuck's sake, nothing had even _happened._

He glanced at Erwin to see the man briefly scanning the other balconies, as if he wasn't sure whether they had been watched. He seemed to have forgotten about being in the open momentarily, and Levi shot him the ghost of a smug nod before dropping his cigarette and grinding it out on the concrete; Erwin's fault for not having any flowerpots to do that in, anyway.

Adam was waiting politely inside the flat, his face rosy from washing and vaguely smelling of peppermint. Levi felt the uncharacteristic urge to ruffle his hair again – seeing that he'd almost ruined the reputation of Adam's father in the neighborhood, he didn't give in to it.

“You coming along on Thursday?”

He'd have to watch his grammar again, lest Adam picked up his way of speaking. Unfortunately, Levi was still keenly aware of Erwin's eyes boring into his back. The sliding door shut almost soundlessly as Erwin rejoined them in the flat, and Adam directed his questioning gaze at him. Questioning, and imploringly, if Levi's experience with the wide eyes of little creatures was anything to go by.

Erwin clearly didn't want him to go, and Adam had to have asked before. If he continued to exclude his son from group activities, Petra's decision was conceivable, and Levi wouldn't disagree. It already felt more like holding Adam hostage instead of taking care of him.

“If you must.”

It practically said _'Don't do it'_ , but Erwin still had to learn the valuable lesson that children were deaf to subtext if it went against their interests. Either you were blunt, or you accepted that ice-cream was simply more alluring than daddy's personal feelings.

“I'm coming along.”

That was... almost an exclamation. By Adam-standards. Marginally louder than his normal feeble volume and also a lot higher, threatening to crack the glass of the sliding door with those few words.

Levi didn't smirk, but he was convinced Erwin noticed his self-satisfaction nonetheless. He had to, because he still watched, and the dryness returned, along with a pang of annoyance. He was too old for this virgin-fuss, so it was just his luck he hadn't gotten around to kiss Erwin. At least he wouldn't be curious now if he had – maybe the man kissed as shitty as he cooked, and they were over and done.

“Good. See you tomorrow, then.” Levi managed a fairly decent nod in Erwin's direction. Again, by his standards. “Mr. Smith.”

There even might have been the ghost of a smile on Erwin's stern face, or just as well no easing at all.

“Have a good day.”

It sounded like an order.

 

First-ice-cream-week continued amiably, and the weather cooperated – Thursday was still sunny, still warm, and Adam was still there.

Levi didn't ask Petra about the progress with Erwin; he was bound to be drawn into another web of lies if he did, and there was no need to.

By Thursday, Levi thought Eld was more excited at the prospect of going out for ice-cream than even the brats were: Anka was obviously getting down to business now that they were engaged, pushing the purification (Levi thought that sounded rather painful) and Gunther making merciless fun of it. Eld could take those digs as well as dish them out, though apparently not on an empty stomach and detox.

Again, Levi had no idea whether it was normal to put up a fuss before a wedding that wasn't even scheduled yet, but Eld seemed to find his lack of input somewhat relaxing, so he didn't bother.

However, it should get one thinking if you were showered in soggy bits of ice-cream wafer because even in the eyes of greedy little creatures, you looked like you were in dire need of calories.

They returned to the day-care center with aching backs, sore throats and stickier than ever with sweat and melted ice-cream, and Levi felt like dropping dead once they'd gotten the children clean to a reasonable degree and bundled the youngest ones off to bed – even those usually not taking naps anymore were tired, so the group was minimized by noon, and those who had stayed up were toning it down.

Eld took his break first, his phone buzzing insistingly for the better part of the day already. He grimaced and shot Levi a meaningful wink. “Mothers.”

Levi tried to look like he knew what Eld was talking about. Mothers, obviously. He wondered how his own mother would have felt about him making life-altering decisions by himself, then thought it wouldn't have pained her. She had always seemed... sensible, even to him, who had had no clear concept of reason yet.

Eld disappeared to answer his phone and probably get into an argument with a woman he evidently did not deem _sensible_ , and Levi thought it safe to leave the few children for a minute to wash his face again and try to get rid of a tenacious stain of strawberry-ice-cream that didn't only attract dirt, it also smelled disgusting.

There was a woman in the main room he didn't recognize. She was slim and blond, her back turned to Levi. She seemed to wait, but she didn't look at the pictures or the scattered toys or at her phone, like you would when you knew _who_ you were waiting for. He could see her tension even from the line of her back.

Naturally, she heard him, her turn was fast and as tense as the rest of her. Her body language showed no nervous restlessness, just this hardness of stiff muscles and stress.

“I saw you today,” she breathed before Levi had even opened his mouth. Her voice was low, but not faint, and the intensity of those blue eyes seemed familiar, even though that was likely a coincidence. Although her fair hair and skin and even those eyes resembled Erwin.

No, not quite. They resembled _Adam._

“I want to see him.” The woman took a step towards Levi, like she was trying to be authoritarian so he wouldn't remember that she actually had no hold.

“See whom?”

Playing dumb wasn't the finest of tactics, but for a moment, it was all Levi could think of.

When Erwin had warned him that this might happen, he hadn't really believed it. And now that it had, now that he saw this woman, her tense posture and the strain in her eyes, he felt like it wasn't so much her appearance that seemed familiar, but her expression.

“My son.” Her voice was even lower now. “I want to see my son.”

It was this expression that Levi knew; that his mother had worn when the state had decided that a prostitute already tested positive could not keep her son, and she knew that nothing could be done, aside from hoping to see him. It had put that expression in her eyes, all but begging openly because she thought he was too young to see that, so he wouldn't remember her as a weeping woman on her knees. And he didn't remember her that way. Even if she had wept, he wouldn't be ashamed of her.

And what the hell were Erwin's damned conditions against that wish of hers?

Levi knew that if his mother had been well enough, if she'd tried to run away with him, he would have gone with her. It was useless to mull over that, but Adam still could. He loved Erwin, but he could at least _see_ his mother...

When he didn't answer immediately, the woman took another steep towards him, her mouth set in a pale line. “Can I see him?”

It was more of a question now, less demanding. She was smaller than him, so she lifted her head slightly to gaze at him. She smelled vaguely of something sweet and floral.

Adam was still awake, or more precisely, he hadn't wanted to take a nap and had been thumbing through a picture-book the last time Levi had seen him. Did his mother know how close she was to him, right now?

_No matter whether you know that person, no matter which reasons are named._

She, too, required only one word for an answer. And Levi knew he needed to give it, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are nearly done, people - though I did expand the plan slightly because the epilogue won't really fit into the fourth chapter, as I had planned it originally.  
> Thank you so much for your support! I already get hyped at all... those... Erwins... in the comments. You're awesome. I would've been so much slower without you guys.  
> With the manga going as it does, I need to post the next chapter before the original continues - I'll try!
> 
> Next chapter includes Levi making decisions, Erwin reacting and... a couch. Among other things.


	4. ... there's fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It should have given Levi pause that Annie had disappeared so suddenly and left her 'goods' alone... His hand touched Adam the very second she aimed her gun at him, again. She never hesitated when she pulled the trigger and shot him.  
> The sheer force of the blows from close distance knocked Levi off his feet. He pulled Adam with him on a mere contraction of muscle and heard the boy scream as he frantically tried to breathe.  
> That fucker. That wretched fucker.

Levi took a step towards the group-room, then another. The woman followed, her eyes as intent and pained as before, and he turned back to her. He had made his decision, but there was little time, and they better didn't cause a stir – the other children were bound to remember, and Eld could return anytime.

“Wait here.”

The woman nodded, rolled up her jacket and wrung her hands, as if to warm them in a makeshift-muff while keeping her fingers busy. Her lashes shaded her blue eyes, darkening them to gentian.

Levi slipped into the group-room where the few remaining children were either absorbed in a board-game or flicked through picture-books, Adam being one of the latter. He was starting to doze off and blinked sleepily when Levi touched his shoulder.

Should he say anything? Ask whether Adam even wanted to see his mother? The issue was quickly solved when another boy caught sight of Levi and wanted help with his puzzle, forcing him to make his departure if he didn't want to waste this chance.

“Come out for a moment, Adam.”

Adam put his book aside, rubbing his eyes; apparently Levi's low tone assured him that he didn't need to wake up properly, instead he briefly touched Levi's trouser leg when walking, as if to keep some form of contact without openly reaching for his hand. Like any other little creature would.

Levi glanced at him and found Adam's dark eyes staring up at him. So dark they were almost black, like gaping pools in his face. The spark of a thought lit inside Levi, but they had already passed the door and wandered out, entering the hall and facing Adam's mother. Her blue eyes widened at his sight.

Blue like Erwin's eyes. Adam's eyes were brown.

It occurred to Levi, right that moment, that the woman had never used Adam's name. She had referred to him as 'her son' and let Levi draw the conclusion.

Possibly because she hadn't _known_ Adam's name.

“Hello there.”

The woman still wrung her hands in her jacket, but her smile was dazzling. “You've grown so much already. Let me... let me look at you, come over.”

Adam proceeded to move over, simply because an adult had told him so, though with no trace of recognition. He could have been too young to remember her when they had been separated, and the concept of parents seemed to be somewhat lost to him. Still...

Levi realized that it didn't fit. The woman resembled Erwin, at least going by rudimentary outer features; possible manipulation if you knew what the father looked like, but not the child. And then let the assumptions of people do the rest.

Levi knew that trick, basic deception, and he couldn't believe he had fallen for it. His hand shot out to grab Adam's shoulder just before the boy was out of his reach, and yanked him back. The child stumbled against him with a startled sound.

“You should leave now.”

The woman looked at him, her eyes still wide, but with a calm behind them that seemed to have settled there the second she saw Adam. She pulled one hand out of her rolled-up jacket and tugged the fabric aside, just slightly enough to expose the blackness of a gun barrel.

“Please don't make this complicated,” the woman said in that same low, but not faint voice. “Your work is difficult enough as it is.”

Levi thought he could feel liquid ice trickle through his veins. At the front gates, he could see Eld still talking, could hear the steady clatter of Petra typing something into her computer, could her the thousand little sounds the children in the surrounding rooms made.

He knew what she implied. And she smiled when she saw that he did.

“Come over, boy.”

She held out her hand, and Adam glanced at her, then craned his head to stare up at Levi. His eyes seemed to grow even larger, his face paler, like he was realizing something was going terribly wrong. “I want to call Erwin now,” he stated, his voice frighteningly bleak and thinner than ever.

Levi forced himself to loosen his hold on the boy's shoulders. From all the detestable shit he'd done in his life, this felt like the sickening peak of it.

And he realized that Adam caught a glimpse of this betrayal with a lack of genuine confusion that was much too old, much too numb for a child. He simply averted his eyes and slipped out of Levi's limp hold, taking stiff steps towards the woman as if hypnotized by her command.

She crouched without losing the focus of her gun, scooping Adam up with her free arm. The muscles underneath her blouse bunched and yet took the extra weight without swaying, which belied her slim built.

She nodded at Levi, politely and without visible triumph, then walked out of the door. Past Eld, who was still engaged in his phone-call, down to the parking lot and out of Levi's sight. Adam didn't look back to him, docile and listless like a kitten when held by the scruff of its neck.

Levi couldn't allow himself to linger. He only had the pager, and he didn't know how quick Erwin would even be to react, and he had no time. He had no... idea either, only that the precautions, the taxi, the long distance, the dead phone-number and dozen other cumbersome details had been created to avoid exactly this case. And then one morning of ice-cream-eating had ruined it.

Levi doubted it was actually that simple, but it didn't matter. He rushed to the cloakroom belonging to his group, knowing that if Erwin was as careful he seemed, he had to have given Adam some sort of device to call him, like the boy had wanted to.

The memory, still fresh and replaying in his mind like a tune he couldn't get out, drove a little spike of self-disgust straight between Levi's ribs. That woman had been a professional, someone who didn't risk her own success at any cost. Her threat hadn't been a bluff, and whoever Adam really was, Levi could not put other children in serious danger for him.

But he had betrayed Adam nonetheless. If he hadn't been blinded by his own, long-gone grief... Which might have been used against him as knowingly as Erwin had done with his criminal record before.

Before Levi could entangle himself deeper in the all too possible forms of manipulation, he had ripped Adam's bag from the hook and was digging through it, his hand groping for anything unfamiliar. There was a tiny first-aid-kit and a tube of sunscreen, Adam's lunchbox and a soft case with glasses branded on it. Levi dug out the last item – Adam wasn't wearing glasses or sunglasses, though Erwin seemed like the type to give them to a child and expect them _not_ to get broken sooner or later.

This case contained a plain prepaid cellphone. It was switched on, luckily, and featured only one number. Erwin obviously trusted his son to keep an eye on it.

Fingers leaving moist little dots on the buttons, Levi made a call and pressed the phone to his ear.

What if Erwin had thought up some nonsense-code of hanging up after three rings and calling again, or some shitty password consisting of Adam's three favorite decalcification-filters? For fuck's sake, it didn't even sound _that_ weird, knowing what a paranoid asshole Erwin was!

“ _The person you have called is temporarily-”_

Levi hung up, cursing under his breath. This was bad... Really bad. He had to get hold of that idiotic viking in some way, tell him about the abduction and _fuck_ whatever Erwin made of that, he couldn't leave Adam in the company of an obviously professional woman with a gun. Levi couldn't pretend he hadn't witnessed it, had allowed someone to use his own memories against him.

People _had_ used his mother when she had been alive, in too many ways. Now that she was dead, he wouldn't tolerate them doing it again.

Levi grabbed Adam's bag, then his own, and stormed out of the center, almost colliding with Eld on the doorstep. He smiled at Levi, brightly and slightly absentmindedly, and Levi thought of punching him.

“Was that Adam's mom? She said you were okay with him leaving early.” The cloud of happiness in his head seemed to lift enough to recognize Levi's distraught expression, and his smile faded. “Levi?”

If he told Eld what had happened, his co-worker would immediately call the police. Levi was already wary of law enforcement officials per se, and Erwin must have had reasons for avoiding attention the way he had.

Be it that anyone even _believed_ that Adam had been abducted by a woman with a gun. As much as parents turned to desperate measures to see their children, that was quite over-dramatic, wasn't it? This was a case for the family court, not for the special forces.

Levi didn't know whether he would have to face that reaction, but he couldn't risk to try. He pushed past Eld, eyes scanning the short lawn and the parking lot when he knew that Adam and his 'mother' were already gone.

“It's an emergency,” he called to Eld as he began to run. “I'll make it up to you!”

He wasn't even sure what he meant by that.

 

The way across town took nerve-grating long, and Erwin still didn't answer any calls. Neither from Adam's phone nor from Levi's own. Levi cursed the fact that he didn't own a car and hadn't thought to borrow Petra's – but making up a story for her would have cost him too much time. Either way, public transport seemed to crawl, and by the time Levi finally shoved his way out of the bus near Erwin's place, he was so tense that his skin seemed to prickle. The warmth they had enjoyed earlier when eating the first ice-cream of the year seemed to have transformed into a disgusting, stifling blanket of heat, even though the temperature or the humidity hadn't changed at all.

His phone rang. It had done so for the past thirty minutes, more or less, and Levi didn't want to find out whether his sudden departure without an explanation had worried Petra that much or if she was starting to doubt Adam's whereabouts. The thought where the boy might be now made Levi sick, and he stopped in his tracks for long enough to swallow the lump in his throat before it choked him.

He'd dealt with people he treasured facing serious danger before. People he could trust to help themselves, people he was willing to take risks for even when that might not be necessary.

But a child was helpless. Levi had never felt that suffocating worry for someone, that justified fear that this person would _not_ make it out by himself.

That was why when a shadow fell upon him, Levi's first impulse was to aim a mean punch at that fucker's gut. It was poorly done, as if his arm had jerked, and his vision blurred a little when he was spun around ninety degrees and dragged along. Nearly casual, as if this was a pleasant stroll with a friend.

“You're obvious,” Erwin said, calm and cool and absolutely aggravating.

He'd caught Levi off guard, blocked out his defense, and for a few seconds they walked side by side, arms loosely linked. Erwin's stride was long and powerful, and Levi had to walk faster to keep up, taking a grateful moment to match his pace and collect himself.

“Adam's been taken.”

Nothing in Erwin's face moved. Not even his arm around Levi's tightened, and nobody coming towards them seemed to notice anything strange. In another time and place, Levi might have admired his ability to blend in when Erwin was anything but unremarkable.

His silence, however, pressured Levi. “Some woman showed up, claiming she'd seen him outside and insisted to meet him. She had a fucking _gun_!” And then, because his nerves were getting the better of him and he couldn't hold it back: “You didn't tell me this was serious!”

Erwin stopped walking, and his arm hooked around Levi's before it could slide out of his grasp. His muscles underneath the soft cotton were hard with tension; he wore long sleeves, unlike most of the people on the street, but the fabric was thin and allowed Levi to feel the glimpse of something strapped to the inside of Erwin's upper arm.

Erwin's face was frightfully blank. There was a riot of _something_ inside of him, Levi felt it, and yet it was kept to himself.

“Thank you for your cooperation. I doubt you'll be bothered again.”

With that, Erwin removed his arm and continued his walk. It was the direction of his flat, Levi noticed, and the pace was a lot faster now. He had to jog to catch up with Erwin, and he'd done so without even thinking.

“Who was she?”

“Someone who won't bother you again,” Erwin repeated stonily and without so much as a glance at Levi.

Did the bastard think he was worried for himself? Honestly?

“What does she want with Adam?” Seeing that she was obviously not his mom. Maybe someone working for his mom, but Levi doubted it.

“You'll sleep better if you don't know.”

Erwin had passed one of the smaller supermarkets now and dodged a sterile flower-shop. Levi shot out to block his path, only to have the man almost crash into him; he could tell that it had been an act not only of reflex, but also of discipline for Erwin to stop himself in time. His face was pale, his jaw tense. In the middle of beginning spring-warmth, Erwin Smith was seemed to freeze the air around him.

Levi steeled himself and refused to back off. “This isn't about me, you shitty jobsworth,” he hissed. “That brat's in a fucking mess right now, and there must be something I can do.”

“There isn't. Don't blame yourself.” The phrase was as hollow as anything. Erwin didn't even try to sound convincing as he brushed past Levi.

It was the easy way out. Not out of mercy or sympathy, Levi knew that; Erwin didn't trust him and thought him incapable, and no doubt he was angry at him for breaking their agreement.

But Erwin was also someone trying hard, maybe too hard to separate his professional and his personal feelings. It was the only chance Levi could think of, and _he_ , as much as he hated it, needed Erwin to work with him, needed access to his information.

Levi hurried to catch up with Erwin, who was now so close to his apartment building that he risked losing him. Still, he couldn't sound rushed or desperate. Levi caught sight of his own pale face in the glass-facade, the sweat sticking strands of hair to his forehead. But Erwin only stared ahead, probably caught up in his ire, so all he had to watch was his voice.

“You can't afford to turn me down because no one else _will_ help you find him.”

It was a gamble; he knew Erwin had people who assisted him, that woman Levi had spoken to over the phone, likely someone who had given Adam and him the right papers, the right cover. But those systems weren't fast, their nets too wide for a timed reaction. Levi knew it: the state had offered it to him as well, a careful yet delayed protection if he chose to cooperate and share the information about his accomplices.

Erwin had no time to wait. Not if he cared about Adam like Levi knew he did.

There was no answer from Erwin this time, just him unlocking the door to the building and not slamming it shut as fast as he could have, fast enough to block Levi out for real. It could have been some modern hydraulic damping device to prevent the heavy fireproof door from damaging the frame, some other reason, but the invitation was as good as any.

 

The flat was as cold and unwelcoming as always, and the sound of Erwin opening his notebook on the kitchen counter first thing after coming in seemed to resonate eerily.

Levi held up Adam's belongings. “If you've got a tracking device in here, it's no use.”

It was more of an attempt at getting the other to explain what was going on, but Erwin simply nodded, as if Levi had made a serious, yet somewhat superfluous remark.

The programs he opened told Levi next to nothing, and his fingers on the keyboard were too fast to make out much. It seemed sensible that Erwin's cover as an IT-consultant was as close to the truth as possible, but it was also an easy way to block out Levi, who had little knowledge about computers in general. If it hadn't been for Adam, he wouldn't have bothered to try to cooperate.

But the problem was that this _was_ about Adam, and Erwin hadn't yet realized that he couldn't do this on his own.

“Need a description of that woman first?” Back when Levi had been an... Ackerman, that was where he would have started. Where Kenny would have started, because that lady obviously hadn't been some dumb front dummy.

“I know her,” Erwin answered simply.

Great. Apparently she knew Erwin as well, at least knew what he looked like so she could imitate him. Levi gritted his teeth and tried again, patience running very thin already. “She claimed she'd seen him on the trip – we didn't walk far, so if anyone on the way saw her-”

“Nobody did. She's discreet.”

“Then for fuck's sake, tap a wire from one of the security-cameras or something!”

“I have nothing to gain from that. It wastes time.”

At that, Levi wondered why he had even tried to be patient with Erwin. Because that indeed wasted time.

He slammed the notebook's display shut so fast that he felt the plastic creak, and Erwin instinctively (and just barely) drew back his hands before they got stuck. His eyes shot up to Levi's, this time truly irritated and an edge of tension visible, a promise of violence for interrupting him.

This time, Levi ignored the thrill that ran through his stomach at the feeling of those eyes drilling holes into him. He kept one hand firmly on the notebook, the other slightly lifted as if he really meant to fling Adam's bag at the other.

“Explain yourself now, or I swear, I'll call the police because for once, I trust them more than you and your hollow spouting of shit.” He peeled his lips back from his teeth in what could not be a smile. “And no, you can't stop me. I'm-”

Fast.

Erwin Smith was also fucking fast.

Levi just barely avoided a punch to the chin that would have knocked him unconscious, if not broken his jaw as well. Erwin hardly got out of balance when his fist hit the air, he regained his stance, suddenly much closer, and attacked again, this time with a neat strike of his elbow into Levi's solarplexus.

The first thing Kenny had ever praised about Levi was the he was short. And it had been nothing but a taunt because Levi wasn't short on purpose, nor did it require any skill.

Fighting someone so noticeably smaller than oneself, though, did require skill. Levi himself was used to his opponent usually being taller and stronger, he had learned to fight like that for years, while Erwin likely faced people of his height, maybe even more.

Their height difference forced Erwin to sag slightly if he meant to hit Levi the way he did and end this quickly, and Levi evaded his blow in the last moment, aiming a punch to Erwin's temple. His knuckles grazed the other man's skin, not hitting as hard as he would have liked but temporarily swaying Erwin's balance.

Levi had planned to follow up with a kick, but Erwin recovered too fast to deliver it properly; thick skull in fact. Instead he covered his fist with Adam's jacket, blocking it for a second from sight before punching into Erwin's kidney.

Which was a lot harder than he'd thought. Erwin was muscular, that much he'd known, but even the weak spot below his ribcage was solid. The kidney-belt-kind of solid.

Levi had the fraction of a second to curse his bad luck before Erwin threw him off his feet with a kick to his gut that left Levi on his back, gasping for air.

It was painful, breath stolen from his lungs and black spots dancing in the corners of his vision, but pain was irrelevant, consciousness imperative. Levi didn't allow himself to linger as he rolled around and dug his heel into the hollow of Erwin's knee as hard as he could.

Maybe it wouldn't have been enough to bring Erwin down, despite Levi being a lot stronger than people judged him to be, but the other had moved his weight to the supporting leg Levi had attacked to end this fight with his foot planted on Levi's chest. Erwin managed to catch his own fall, probably to roll of his shoulder, and Levi knew he couldn't let him do that: if Erwin came to his feet before he did, this was over.

Bracing his legs before he had even fully come into a crouch, Levi crashed into him and this time, he straddled him and pressed his elbow so tightly against Erwin's larynx that he heard the other gasp. While Erwin was doubtlessly strong enough to throw Levi off again, the pointed bone threatened to crush his voice box too hard to risk it.

Bigger than him. Stronger than him. And yet it meant nothing because Levi could overpower him, because he was fucking _tougher_.

Levi became aware that he was breathing hard himself, his back and ribs stung fiercely with every lungful, and his head pounded where it had connected with the floor. He had managed to pin one of Erwin's arms to his side with his legs, the other was bent and hovered over Levi's thigh, frozen in mid-motion to push him off. Levi could feel his quick breathing as well, the rise and fall against the inside of his thighs, the strain to draw in air against the confines clamping down on his sides. Powerful muscles twitching beneath him, but restraining themselves because of the imminent danger of having his windpipe crushed.

The feeling of triumph at his victory mixed with the adrenaline and the echo of pain from his body, and it excited Levi like nothing else. The rush of desire flooded him so suddenly that he felt his groin tighten, his mouth went dry. And flat out arid when he realized that although temporarily beaten, Erwin's eyes held no fear or submission: the fight was blazing in them, his body was tense, watching and waiting for any weakness that gave him an opening for a new attack. He was down, but he wasn't even close to surrendering.

Just for that, Levi wanted him so badly that his cock ached.

Erwin drew his lower lip in for a split second, his tongue ghosting over it as a dark-red flash. Levi felt him inhale deeply, blood thrumming treacherously although Erwin's face remained calm even when his eyes did not.

If Levi had had any doubt that this man wanted to fuck him, they'd be erased by this.

“I'll tell you.”

He was also quite sure that the rasp in Erwin's voice wasn't solely the elbow still pressing against his throat. Levi eased his hold just slightly and tried to stifle the urge to rock back into Erwin's lap, simply for the sound of that voice. No way of telling whether he bastard wouldn't throw him into the kitchen counter if he displayed weakness.

“Tell me now,” Levi hissed, his voice guttural in his own ears.

“Let go first. This is...”, he felt Erwin swallow with some difficulty, since the pressure of bone still hadn't lessened enough to let the muscles contract normally, “... impracticable.”

“That's how I prefer it.” If the innuendo wasn't in his words, Levi was sure it was in his hoarse tone.

Erwin had the nerve for the slightest roll of his hips, so small that it could have been a twitch of his muscles, but Levi was suddenly keenly aware of the way the other man's body arched just a little beneath him.

The bastard liked to play dirty then. Levi knew that the attraction sizzling between them was mutual, but he wasn't blind: Erwin had more in mind than getting his elbow from his throat. Apparently, he still tried to get away with as little shared information as possible, and distracting Levi might cost him time, yet he obviously deemed it worth it.

Adam, however, had no time for some adult game of Old Maids. The thought sobered Levi up abruptly, and he leaned down, adding more weight and forcing Erwin to gasp quietly. _“Why was Adam abducted by some shitty bitch with a gun?”_

He felt Erwin's hand press against his shoulder and allowed him to push him back just enough for a clear answer. Admittedly, Erwin didn't need much air for a calm, professional tone. “He has witnessed... things. Things that could prove dangerous even for dangerous people.” Erwin's eyes hardened like glass cooling off within milliseconds. “That's why they need him; they don't know _what_ he knows exactly, and whether he can be useful for them. That's why he's not dead yet.”

Not dead yet.

“Why not join a witness-protection program?” They had offered that to Levi as well, if he came clean about everything he knew about his uncle's doings.

There wasn't even a glint of humor in the tiny smile Erwin answered him with. “Because then he'd be lost to the people I work for, who _also_ want to know what he knows. He's too young to cooperate, and there's a good chance he's been instructed to tell nothing unless he trusts that person.”

Adam wasn't trusting, Levi had noticed that. But that wasn't what caught his attention in those words.

“You are not his father.”

Erwin met his eyes without even batting an eyelid. “No.”

“You didn't even _pretend_ to be his father.”

“I did, formally. It was needed. But Adam knows I'm not.”

Yes. But Adam _wanted_ Erwin to be his father. Levi couldn't tell whether Erwin hadn't realized that himself or acted like he hadn't, and it made no difference right now.

“Basically, you need Adam to trust you so he'll give you some shit of car-construction-details or-”

“Are you familiar with the name Reiss, Mr. Mercer?”

Levi briefly closed his eyes. If Erwin had wanted to, this short time-span would have been enough to overpower him, but Levi's reaction seemed to confirm what he had expected. Erwin pushed the elbow from his throat, and Levi let him, for once unable to meet the other's eyes.

He knew the Reiss-family, every Ackerman did; even his mother had, even though she'd tried her best to escape the wallow of gang warfare and 'family matters' even before he'd been born. At the time Levi had managed to untangle himself from his uncle's affairs, there had been a grudging truce between Reiss and Ackerman, but he remembered their fearsome efficiency and their strange, cult-like structure. Not that his own family was any better, and yet... The thought of someone like Adam being hunted by the Reiss-family turned his stomach.

“Fuck.”

“Adam's mother has collected a great deal of data about both Reiss and Ackerman. Encoded, highly sensitive, and so far undiscovered. She disappeared and may not be alive, but she must have made sure Adam survived without her.”

There was an odd note to Erwin's voice, something that seemed to come from the light vibrations of his voice rather than from his mouth. Levi pulled himself together with a tinge of annoyance and looked back at the other. “You knew her well.”

“She was my professional partner.” This time there was a hint of stubbornness that seemed to refer to the tense they were using. _He doesn't believe she's dead. Or rather: he doesn't want her to be dead._

This, combined with Erwin's refusal to call Adam his son, made Levi wonder whether this woman had really only been his partner and friend, or if any romantic interest had been involved on his side. He could ask, but it was unwise to corner Erwin when it really wasn't important right now.

“So they're gonna get out of Adam what they want to hear,” Levi concluded bleakly.

Erwin blinked a little slower than he needed to. A man trying not to imagine what Levi had just said. “What she gave Adam isn't just encoded, she likely passed it to him when he was too young to comprehend or too scared to assimilate. If given the key stimulus, he might remember, but he can't trigger the memory on his own.” He made a tiny pause, then added: “It's a theory. I must admit my employers no longer have as much faith in it as I have.”

“So they toned down on the security,” Levi remarked mercilessly. “You're on your own. Some distant help, probably funding, but no one to support you. And you didn't get any clues form Adam either, so they don't give a flying fuck about what Reiss wants with him.”

“Unpleasantly accurate.”

“How much time do we have until they lose patience?” Levi really didn't want to know.

Erwin sat up, and for a moment, they were awkwardly close. They hadn't kissed so far, and for once, the desire didn't cross Levi's mind either: his stare was drawn to Erwin's eyes. They were... weary from constant tension and brittle, like he was too much of a reasonable man to ignore what might be happening to Adam right now, and forcing himself to stay calm in spite of it. Whatever affection he held for Adam's mother, he'd certainly meant to protect the boy for her sake, as well as Adam's own. Ironically, Levi had noticed early that Erwin wasn't comfortable around children and treated Adam like an adult; he just hadn't known how truly unusual the situation was.

He moved off Erwin and the man got up, his hand coming up to touch his own throat for a moment before stepping away, back to the counter and the notebook as if nothing had happened. But there was a difference to his silence now: he was still thinking, and Levi didn't interrupt him.

There was a light bruise forming on the skin of Erwin's temple, and Levi could feel a set of own bruises beginning to color his lower chest. The bump on the back of his head didn't bleed, luckily, but he had the feeling that if Erwin had gotten serious without the fear for Adam in the back of his mind, there _would_ have been blood.

Even during this relatively open communication, Erwin had managed to evade the question what he truly was. He could be a state agent as well as a security employee of a private company: both Reiss and Ackerman had multiple enemies as well as allies, and even during his high time, Levi hadn't even known half of them.

“Miss Leonhart is very diligent,” Erwin begun, as if there hadn't been a pause at all. “Judging by her usual procedure, she will cover her tracks first and then contact someone she deems reliable.”

“That means someone of the inner family.”

“Yes. She risks taking more time if it means that the delivery goes smoothly and under her control, ensuring that she gets paid fully. She's not trusting.”

Levi had figured that much. Aside from the fact that Erwin seemed to think she wouldn't be unnecessary cruel to Adam, those weren't awfully good news – if she took no risks with her disappearance, she wouldn't take any with her delivery either. “Does she know me, too?”

Levi half-expected a confirmation, but Erwin's fingers on the keyboard stilled for a moment instead. The silence was strangely loud.

“I don't think so,” he said after what could only have been two or three seconds, though it seemed so much longer than that. “She's been hired, and she strictly denies taking assistance from the family, knowing it decreases her payment. Did she hint anything?”

Levi thought back to the few things Miss Leonhart had said to him. It had sounded like she knew who his mother had been and how he had been taken from her, but maybe he had read too much into it. She _had_ influenced him with the similarities between herself and Erwin, however... If she was as careful as Erwin said, would she have taken the risk to threaten him, not knowing what he might have up his sleeve? Wouldn't she have waited until Eld and he took turns with the lunch break so she wouldn't meet him?

“No,” Levi said slowly. “And she's too young to have known me before.”

The Ackerman-family had a different structure than Reiss, basing their contacts on public images rather than actual family members. Back then, few people had even known who Kenny was, not to mention his relation to Levi. It kept them from getting ideas.

“I see.” Erwin's brows furrowed. “But she must have chosen her hideout carefully nonetheless. Adam's tracking device isn't responding.”

So Miss Leonhart hadn't even bothered placing it somewhere to fool Erwin – she seemed to know a good deal about him as well, guessing it would only waste her time. She wouldn't be found.

Which automatically lead Levi's thoughts to the point where she would have to leave her hideout. “If she insists on contact with someone from the inner family, they must have a safe trade depot first. Do you know where they'd set it up?”

The corners of Erwin's mouth turned down slightly, setting his face into an even grimmer expression. “Without the necessary backup in IT, I won't find out in time.” He said it like he had twisted and turned it in his mind already without any hopes remaining.

Levi knew people who didn't need nearly as much time. It had taken him a lot to forget about them, at least for a while. If he remembered them now, it would take even more, possibly more than he was willing to give.

But there was no choice now. Not for him.

“Got a clean phone?” Levi almost grimaced when Erwin shot him a glance that hinted distrust. It was probably natural after he'd been on his own with Adam for at least months, gambling their physical integrity (if not lives) for the promise of information, but it felt like a shitty little stab into Levi's thinning nerves. He flashed his teeth in the direction of the blond.

“I can find out where they trade. With a little luck, I'll even know who's coming.”

He was going to regret this choice, but regrets were selfish and irrelevant. They couldn't count, not for him.

 

Levi had withdrawn into the bathroom to make his phone-call, then used that excuse for a moment to lock the door and scrub his face with cold water. It didn't make him cleaner or less sweaty, but it helped.

God, he wanted a cigarette. The aroma of tar was so much better than the lingering aftertaste of hypocrisy. Exiting the bathroom, he found that Erwin had closed the shutters and turned the lights on. A silver suitcase was now seated on the coffee-table, and Levi heard the metallic snap of a magazine fitted into a gun. A man calmly preparing for a fight. Not his first, going by the routine.

Levi crossed the room and lifted a hand to open the balcony-door, but Erwin turned around. “Someone could see you outside.”

“Yeah?”

“You're also an easy target.”

Levi rolled his eyes, though he let go of the door handle with a frustrated sigh. Fucking wonderful – thanks to the open kitchen-area being in the same space as the living-room, an apartment as modern as this had to have smoke detectors.

“The detector is deactivatable.”

Not only could Erwin apparently read his mind, he could also use words Levi hadn't ever heard of. He'd probably played a lot of Scrabble in his childhood.

“It's gonna take some time, half an hour or so,” Levi said without being asked as he made his way to the kitchen counter and climbed up. The smoke detector was a small cylinder with a blinking red light and, indeed, a switch that turned it off. Levi idly wondered why Erwin knew that: he wasn't _that_ tall, and who checked their smoke detectors for switches when they moved in?

Levi turned the gadget off and felt his abdomen ache dully when he stretched. He knew it was from the bruises forming beneath his skin, but it felt hollow, like a reminder of the step backwards he had taken.

He jumped down from the shiny monstrosity that dominated the kitchen and tugged his pack of cigarettes from his pocket. The phone Erwin had lent him was annoyingly quiet, even though Levi knew it had only been a few minutes since he'd contacted his... past.

That much hadn't changed: waiting was the worst part. Levi took a cigarette from the pack and forced himself to sit down on the couch instead of pacing around. He'd been too warm outside, and with the shutters closed, it felt cold enough to raise gooseflesh.

He had already lit the cigarette when he remembered that there was no ashtray on the table and he hadn't thought to bring a saucer from the kitchen. Levi cursed under his breath and moved to get up, only to have a square plate filled with pale sand pushed over to him; a decorative object that came with a tiny rake and a few pebbles. A miniature Zen-garden.

Deciding that his 'inner center' couldn't get more fucked up anyway, Levi nodded and sank back into the cushion, strewing a bit of ash into the arrangement before taking another drag. Then he glanced at Erwin, who, now that he was done with checking his arsenal, stared into the lining of the suitcase. He seemed deep in thought, and it wasn't actually hard to guess about what.

“Want one?”

It seemed weeks, not a few days ago that he had last offered Erwin a cigarette.

Erwin eyed the glowing tip critically for a moment, as if debating with himself, then his shoulders relaxed a little. Nice tell, those shoulders. When he extended his hand, Levi fished another cigarette out of the pack, only to see that hand sink again.

“For fuck's sake, never smoked in the boys room?”, Levi scoffed. At least the corner of Erwin's mouth twitched a little. “Several times, actually. I know the song.”

“Fuck you, you weren't even badass at school, no matter what you say.”

The corners of Erwin's eyes crinkled slightly, a brief flash of something like delight; Levi had noticed it before, and it had puzzled him back then already. As if being called a model student was a compliment. As if it was pleasant to be called _nice_ , even in sarcasm.

“I won't share,” Levi grumbled and jammed the cigarette between his lips. “Spit's got a shit-load of germs.”

“Is that so.” Erwin sounded disinterested, but he had responded at all, which told Levi enough by now. “And I thought it was a ritual.”

“It is,” Levi clipped. “But I already told you – you're no accomplice of mine.”

“Fair enough.” Something about the way Erwin said it was aloof, unsurprised. A man not hoping for more because he had learned not to.

A man like that had precious few friends. Just for a moment, Levi wondered how Erwin really felt about the loss of Adam's mother, no matter what kind of love he held for her. Maybe a few germs weren't that terrible then.

Before Levi had quite finished that thought, the phone inside his pocket hummed.

Erwin shut the suitcase with a click and briefly checked his watch, an oddly casual action for someone who happened to carry a loaded gun under his thin, fashionable jacket. “Where are we going?”

“To mine, I need a few things. Then to the boondocks,” Levi said with a dry edge that was new even to him. “Reiss secured a warehouse there. And Uri likes a little peace and quiet.”

 

When he hadn't gotten rid of all his belongings from his former life, Levi had done so to keep them as a reminder, not because he'd thought he would ever need them again.

The irony, really.

Erwin didn't say anything when Levi dumped the baseball-bag in the foot space of the passenger seat, and he appreciated it. It was a clean and impersonal vehicle, likely a rental car. A booster seat was tugged almost ashamedly into the rear bench, although the car itself seemed to be part of a contingency plan rather than for daily use, since Erwin hadn't taken it anywhere before. But he did have that seat, in the rear bench as prescribed. A dutiful father, Levi would have thought.

“You care, don't you,” he muttered as Erwin started the engine. Either the other man hadn't heard him, or he didn't answer at once, and Levi went on before he might. “So, are you a state agent or what?”

“Lines are blurred,” Erwin answered, which was likely his way of saying: _None of your shitty business._

It wasn't like Levi was terribly interested in Erwin's employer. He was just... uncomfortably close to being nervous, and talking distracted him. “So 'Erwin' isn't actually your name.”

“It has been for quite a while.”

“If you ever gave a straight answer, you'd fucking _choke_.”

Erwin maneuvered the car into the midday-traffic, and the sun gleaming on his skin made it impossible to see small twitches of his facial expression. “It's better not to dwell on names. They tend to lead to conflicts of identity.”

“Can't picture you conflicted, Smith.”

“I figured you weren't creative.”

“You're just not inspiring.”

Erwin glanced at him, and Levi's mind reacted with a flash of the feeling at having that firm body underneath himself, tense with readiness to lash out. And since the idiot was already watching, Levi stuck the tip of his tongue briefly through the corner of his mouth. “Most of the time,” he added a little smug.

It was bad luck to plan for anything after a coup. It turned attention away from the present and made you careless, and if they really got Adam back, Erwin would want to leave the city as soon as possible. It was the smartest thing to do. It was what Levi would make him do if he didn't get his ass in gear.

But it was a damn shame nonetheless.

“Do you know Uri Reiss?”

Maybe Erwin had come to the same conclusion and decided he didn't need more teasing. His hands were gripping the steering-wheel hard, though that said little; his tension hadn't eased since they'd gotten into the car.

“Not personally.”

“Your uncle mentioned him?”

“Asking shit you already know? What are you, a crappy lawyer or just really bad at smalltalk?”

“Curious. I haven't heard of him.”

“He's not... usually available.” Levi frowned at a red traffic light. “He's the patriarch's younger brother, so there's no way he's not involved, but I don't know his job. Reclusive, I'd say. I've never heard of him handling trades.” He would have liked to add something for his own sake as well as Erwin's, something like 'he's not known to be violent either', the problem was that he didn't _know_ , not even that much.

And asking for more information would mean running up more debts. All he needed to know was that he'd bash that fucker's head in if the occasion called for it.

They had left the busy part of town behind, the streets grew bumpy and curvier. Levi, who'd spent all his life in large cities, had never felt especially relaxed in the outskirts, and this part was mostly occupied by run-down warehouses and rusting factories. There was an old canal that had once kept the area alive, but had been abandoned with the modernization of the natural riverside. The ground was filled with traces of chemical waste nobody wanted to know too much about, so the place was slowly rotting. Still young enough to appear somewhat decent and rural, yet already dying on the inside.

It gave Levi the chills. At the same time, he felt sweat trickle through the closely cropped hair into the nape of his neck. He cursed through his teeth and wiped his skin with a handkerchief, wrinkling his face at the disgusting feeling of soggy paper. He didn't remember ever breaking out in sweat before when there had been a job ahead.

But his jobs had never been about anything alive, either. And never about a little creature.

Erwin parked the car behind a couple of old water tanks on pallets, as close to the trading place as they could without drawing attention. Levi had insisted on giving the actual place a wide berth, and for once, Erwin hadn't questioned his instructions.

He did, however, give Levi a strange look once he opened the bag.

“Baseball bat?”

Levi pulled the wooden club out and leaned it against the seat to dive for a switchblade that he stuffed into his pocket, keenly aware of the remains of strawberry-ice-cream on the denim. “How do you manage not to cut yourself with your sharpness, Smith?”

“Are you aiming for close combat?”

“I'm aiming for no combat at all. You shoot, I get Adam.” Levi checked the taser, found it out of battery and tossed it back in. “Uri's got bodyguards, but they're paid to protect him, not to secure his deal. So there's that little bitch.”

“That makes about four to five people, one of them a trained mercenary. We need to plan our approach so-”

A horn blared, was cut off, then sounded again. Erwin heard it, too, and immediately fell silent. It was quiet for a few seconds, then an iron pipe rattled against a chain-link-fence. It was the sign Levi had been told about, the confirmation that whoever was coming had made clear plans with Reiss, and was being expected.

It was half an hour earlier than Erwin had calculated, and his expression became startled for a moment; by that time, Levi was already halfway out of the car.

“Approach planned, we're out of time, I'll get us in. If we can startle them, it might be enough.”

Levi shut the door as quietly as possible and saw Erwin surface above the car's roof, his jaw set in a stubborn expression. “That won't suffice. Give me a minute to explain my strategy.”

He didn't ask, he demanded. Levi didn't like his tone, his quickness to take command, and he was still rather sure that they didn't even have that minute to waste. And he didn't trust Erwin's skills either, just because the fucker had a gun.

But then again, he hadn't trusted Erwin this morning, and it had landed them here and Adam head-first in shit. Maybe he should give another approach a try.

He was seriously getting too old for this.

 

The warehouse had been cleared a while ago, but marks and scrapes in the dirt still outlined the places where boxes, pallets and barrels had stood, and there was that faint whiff of old paint. In the spacious yet somewhat compact surroundings, a small group of people didn't seem out of place: two bulky men dressed casually, a middle-aged man, a slim woman and a child. Like a little family receiving a tour through the warehouse from friendly junk dealers who'd even reactivate the crane to show off in front of the kid.

Said kid was conscious, to Levi's surprise, and paler than he'd ever seen him. Miss Leonhart had placed her hands on his sunken shoulders, and Levi thought he could see it now, the despondence of a boy whose life was, in absolutely every aspect, ruled by adults. While probably all kids his age felt that way, he was right about it.

And now he was staring blankly at a man who had crouched enough to be at his level, obviously trying to find eye-contact. He was informally dressed with a coat a bit too long for this weather and a scarf whose ends now touched the concrete ground, someone who seemed to feel perpetually chilly. He was frail without being visibly thin, his face strangely older than Levi judged his years. His eyes were unusually bright and surrounded by spidery wrinkles.

He was speaking too quietly to be heard, likely to Adam, and Miss Leonhart just barely didn't roll her eyes. She wasn't loud either, but her voice was sharper, the way Levi remembered it.

“He's not hurt, he just doesn't speak.”

Dust collected on Levi's chest and elbows as he crawled, sticking to his skin. His heart was beating fast, but not erratically so; he knew where he was headed. He hoped Erwin did, too.

One of the bodyguards glanced around and Levi lowered his head, pressing his cheek against the concrete so the pale skin of his face wouldn't be recognized between the barrels. He froze and heard a voice, still a murmur, and oddly blithe, as if this really was a picnic.

“I wasn't aiming to criticize you, Annie – I'm sure you have done everything humanly possible to make this as bearable as you can. However, this must be a terribly frightening experience for a child. Adam here is holding up so well, I need to make sure he's alright.”

“You mean you want to make sure it's him.” Annie Leonhart sounded a tad impatient, likely not as annoyed as she felt. Levi proceeded.

“Rod insists I do. It isn't you he distrusts, dear. Adam, open your mouth a little, please? Thank you. It's just a little spit, I promise it won't hurt. Ah, there. Wonderful, thank you again.”

“Mr. Reiss.”

Levi instinctively stopped at the note of warning in Miss Leonhart's voice, because he knew it would alarm the bodyguards as well.

“Uri, please.” A low grunt as the man rose from his crouch, a sound of someone older than him. “Yes, I understand. Since we've established that Adam is truly Adam, you deserve your payment with all due respect. You will want to count it, I think?”

Levi held his breath as the moment where Miss Leonhart would let go of Adam to finish the trade finally came and peered through the gap between two barrels, tensing up. He felt the switchblade in his pocket like something sly and alien, the bat in his hand was comfortingly heavy. Blades were always so quick.

Except that Annie didn't let go of Adam. Something in Uri's overly-friendly and polite behavior seemed to have made her wary, and Levi would have agreed with her, if he hadn't been so busy wishing her to hell.

“I'll trust you.”

She held out her hand for the bland sports-bag with the squash-imprint, the other one still rested firmly on Adam's shoulder. Uri stared at her, surprised; as if he didn't need to guard his emotions. “I didn't count it either,” he remarked, glancing at the bodyguard holding the bag. “If it's the sum you and Rod have agreed-”

“I'll take it anyway.” This time, the annoyance in Annie's voice was clear, and the hired muscle reacted accordingly. Levi bit his lip to keep still: it was the perfect moment to attack, the focus of those man had shifted to Miss Leonhart for the short while they needed to estimate whether she was a threat to their superior and whether Uri wanted her punished for her rudeness.

But she still had Adam, and Erwin's plan told him to wait. Levi forced himself to let the chance pass, not sure whether he trusted Erwin or simply hesitated as long as Adam might get caught in the crossfire. Quite literally.

“I see.” Uri's tone held no anger, even a slight contrition. “May I ask you to stay for a moment longer while we conclude this?”

Considering he hadn't ordered his goon to give her the money yet, that was a rhetorical question. Levi watched as Uri got to his knees again in front of Adam, fixing the boy with an earnest, intense stare of his bright eyes. “I'm so very sorry for this.”

For someone who merely buttered up the kid he wanted information from, Uri sounded strangely like he meant it.

Adam didn't respond. He didn't cry either, and there were no tear streaks on his cheeks, but his face was bloodless, his dark eyes huge. He breathed shallowly, as deeply withdrawn into himself as he could. He let Uri take his hand like it didn't really belong to him; just some limp attachment to his body, like a scab that hadn't come off.

“This will hurt a little,” Uri told him after he'd waited for a few seconds. Levi couldn't see what he was doing, but luckily, the bastard continued to explain shit. “We're off to a dreadfully boring car ride, so it'll be over soon if you sleep for a while.”

“Mr. Reiss,” one of the bodyguards warned. Adam made a small noise when something, probably the needle of a syringe, pierced his skin and injected something that Levi could only hope was truly the right dose of narcotic for a child.

“All done,” Uri announced, and right that moment, a barrel crashed into the concrete next to him.

The bodyguard holding Annie's payment was fast, but Levi was faster. He lunged and smashed the bat against the man's shins as he ran for Uri, feeling bone break under the smooth wood. The man screamed and collapsed, and Levi was above him, lifted his head by the collar and slammed it back down. He didn't wait to see whether his opponent had truly lost consciousness but glanced to the sides, he needed the next part of Erwin's diversionary-

He found himself mere feet away from Uri Reiss. Their eyes locked for a moment.

Uri smiled at him. It was a dazzling smile that erased the thin wrinkles around his eyes and emanated such unreserved warmth that Levi found himself unable to lunge out at him. For that moment, he couldn't help himself but believe that this man, whoever he really was, regarded him with no ill will.

“Mercer!”

The bark of Erwin's voice jolted Levi back into the present – and how very much like that fucker to use his last name, even though a fake one.

Right. Uri was not his target, and he couldn't look back to see where the other bodyguard was; he'd have to trust Erwin to handle that. Just like he'd have to trust that man's assessment on Miss Leonhart's course of action: taking her money because securing the trading place hadn't been her job, and she wouldn't let herself be blamed for Reiss' failure.

Which would give Levi an opening for Adam. It was risky, especially since the narcotic hadn't been part of the plan, but if Erwin took up enough attention...

The tower crane, the next decoy, whirred into action, though not fast enough. The moment Levi reached Adam, who stared blankly at him, shots rang.

It should have given Levi pause that Annie had disappeared so suddenly and left her _goods_ alone... His hand touched Adam the very second she aimed her gun at him, again. She never hesitated when she pulled the trigger and shot him.

The sheer force of the blows from close distance knocked Levi off his feet. He pulled Adam with him on a mere contraction of muscle and heard the boy scream as he frantically tried to breathe.

That fucker. _That wretched fucker._

Levi refused to let go of his consciousness, even when black clouded his vision and he couldn't seem to pull in any air. There was a weight of pain pressing down his chest, and he could easily escape it by ceasing to struggle...

He heard a series of dull crashes and people moving quickly, the shadows dancing before his eyes became sharper. Levi forced himself to sit up, commanded his mind to ignore the pain, the panic that something, if not everything in his chest was shattered. He became aware that he was breathing, shallowly and with a thin, pathetic wheezing sound, and that his hand still clawed Adam's arm, leaving bruises in the soft skin.

The boy stared at him, eyes glazed yet focused despite the narcotic, and terribly wide. He still didn't cry. It would be better if he did, like with that stupid bee-sting, but they would make do without it.

Levi dragged both himself and Adam behind an old work bench, although the weight of his own body was painful enough. His head pounded, he felt the small spots where the bullets had hit him, one close to the heart and one in the stomach-area, professional aiming, just like Erwin had predicted.

But when he had insisted that Levi wore a protection vest, he had obviously not simply been cautious: he had fully expected Levi to get shot.

Levi hoped Erwin survived this. He'd bash his face in for that.

“Levi?”

He had almost, nearly almost drifted off, even though breathing had become slightly easier. Adam's voice was so low he barely heard it, and yet it pulled him back.

Not done here.

Levi closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath. It hurt so bad it made his eyes water and choked him, but no stabbing agony; no broken ribs jabbing his lungs. Maybe a few of them were cracked, and they'd be colorful as fuck later, however... He wasn't done. Ignore the pain, move on.

He burrowed his hand in Adam's lank hair and pressed the boy's face against his shoulder. The strands were soft and thin beneath his fingers, as if even his hair was fragile. Levi stared at the expressionless face of Uri's second bodyguard a few feet away, whose bleeding had stopped soon, and cradled the child's head in his hand. He wouldn't let him see.

Though he feared Adam had seen death already.

Shaky little hands grabbed at his chest, the torn cloth where no blood oozed out. Levi breathed out, urging his body to realize that he wasn't mortally wounded. It, and Adam.

“It's fine,” Levi hissed through his teeth, then unclenched his jaw. “I've got you now. I'm your robot.”

The hands stilled, then slid down Levi's chest as the small body relaxed against him. Adam's eyes had closed, but he was breathing steadily. He was sleeping now, and Levi held him close for a second, taking in his subtle, clean scent.

This was where Erwin's plan told him to retreat, take the car and disappear as quickly as possible. Seemed like a wise choice.

If he was up to explaining Adam where Not-Daddy was when the brat woke up, and the bastard was too weak to look after himself.

Feeling once more like an utter asshole, Levi carefully moved Adam under the work bench, in case more barrels came flying, and pulled himself into a crouch. Every breath still hurt like hell, but adrenaline was taking over, and the instinctive panic of getting no air was wearing off.

The bodyguard had a holster with a gun. He hadn't pulled it out yet when Erwin's bullet had torn through his temple, and Levi briefly considered taking it. Erwin had wanted him to have some kind of small arms weapon, and Levi's refusal had been firm, unlike in the discussion about the vest. He wondered whether the fucker had planned for that as well.

No. Not this time.

The baseball bat had been knocked out of his hand when he had been shot and was now a few feet away. Levi was ready to leap for it when the magnificent Miss Annie Leonhart whirled through the air like she weighted nothing at all and blocked his way.

Unintentionally so, Levi realized after a moment of shock. Her eyes were fixed on her opponent, not him, who still crouched, and he was almost close enough to touch her. Annie's left hand was bloody and one of her cheekbones darkened, but her stance was flawless nonetheless, her face calm; someone who had learned to ignore pain. She still had her gun, it was shoved into her jacket; either the magazine was empty or she didn't risk wasting ammunition.

Erwin slammed into her, faster than Levi thought he could move, but this time, Annie didn't allow him to send her flying. Her shin connected with his knee, the next instant she slipped out of his grasp before he quite had her. Annie, too, was significantly smaller than Erwin, and Levi understood why he had wanted to avoid close combat with her.

She landed more blows, but Erwin could apparently take plenty. His lower lip and nose were bloody, though not heavily damaged, and he moved fluently despite her attacks. He too didn't seem to have noticed Levi.

There were no taunts, no challenges thrown around; no demands for surrender. None of them would give up. They were in for the kill.

Annie suddenly darted to the side and ran for the stairs to the upper ledge. Erwin immediately followed, and Levi took his chance to retrieve the bat and find better cover, somewhere he could-

Annie spun at the foot of the stairs, just before Erwin reached her, and evaded him with a sidestep. She brought him down with a vicious kick of her heel, yet Erwin curled before the back of his head could crash into the stairs and dragged Annie with him, sacrificing his mobility for a short time span to protect his head and consciousness. Levi heard a grunt of pain that was likely her voice, a spray of blood, metal creaking.

But she came out on top. And pulled the gun from her jacket.

It was too late to take aim. Levi slammed the bat against her temple right when the shot rang.

He felt rather than saw Annie collapse, blood oozing from the laceration the hard hit had caused her. The memory of her skull beneath the bat, solid and yet frighteningly fragile, kept repeating in Levi's mind, numbed him, and he couldn't help but stare at her body.

Erwin slowly brought his hand to his upper arm. It came back bloodied. He pushed Annie off him, almost carefully, as if he was numb with shock himself. His wound bleeding profusely and likely burning with pain, but not dangerously so.

Wordlessly, Levi held out his hand to help him up. Equally wordlessly, Erwin took it.

“She's not dead.” Erwin's voice was a rasp. Levi himself felt as if he'd chewed wire wool. “I know,” he responded, even though he hadn't. “Don't kill her.”

Erwin looked like a wanted to argue, then either the finality in Levi's demand or the prospect of that effort shut him up. He simply nodded and wiped blood off his face with his sleeve, an automatic move. “Where's Adam?”

He might not be there anymore. The thought hit only then.

Levi ran to the work bench, his knees almost giving out on him when the boy was still lying there, his face oddly relaxed in artificial sleep. Levi gently pulled him out from underneath the bench, he hardly noticed the little piece of glass that rolled along with a clear little jingle.

Erwin did. He retrieved it after he had shed his jacket, revealing a still bleeding graze on his upper arm; not the mortal wound Annie had doubtlessly meant to cause. The thought chilled Levi in a strange way.

“What's that?”

It was a marble in the color of light, soft caramel. Erwin's bloody fingerprints seemed to stain it in an almost obscene way.

“A reminder from Reiss.” Erwin's voice was cool with his contained, calm rage as he dropped the marble. “Let's go.”

 

“He did this.”

Levi heard the quiet astonishment in his own voice over the steady hum of the car's motor.

Erwin didn't immediately react. There was a bruise forming on his chin and below his eye, but he somehow managed to look like an ordinary man taking his patchwork-family out for an afternoon in the sunny nature. Like all the other men his age on the highway.

“Who?”

It was telling that he didn't ask 'What' first.

“Uri Reiss.” Levi shook his head and glanced in the mirror to make sure Adam was still in his booster seat and still sleeping peacefully. He couldn't help it.

“He had shitty few bodyguards. He wasted time like he didn't _know_ you'd come running.”

“I wouldn't have found the place in time on my own.” It wasn't so much a thanks as a mere fact, considering that Levi hadn't helped him out of courtesy.

“He's a Reiss, he always considers shit like that. Annie did, but he held her up with that identification-crap, as if that was necessary. He fucking asked her to count her money, as if his family couldn't be trusted.”

“Maybe that's why he's rarely seen.”

“Smith.” Levi raked a hand through his hair, shooting the driver a smoldering look. “He grinned at me like I was the fucking stripper from his birthday cake. We don't know where he vanished, but he could have shot the two of us _and_ taken Adam like it's Christmas. Instead, he left you some trinket to suggest that he just didn't do that. One of his bodyguards his dead, the other won't remember, Annie won't talk shit – how much more proof do you need?!”

This time, Erwin took even longer to respond. The muscles of his arm flexed slightly beneath the makeshift-bandage Levi had made with the car's first-aid kit. “I don't want to,” he said finally, a terse note to his voice, as if he forced the words – it might even sound like he was being honest. “It would make me wonder what else he might have feigned.”

Levi had an idea where Erwin's thoughts were headed. Since he knew that he now owned his uncle a favor _again_ , he supposed he didn't need to pry. They would have to go over their respective skeletons in the closet soon enough.

For now, Levi allowed himself to bask in the relief of having gotten that little pest back. He was hurting all over and felt more exhausted than could be reasonable, but Adam was safe... Temporarily. Levi carefully settled a little deeper into his seat, the afternoon sun was warm on his face and hair.

“I'll break your fucking jaw for the shitty trick with the vest.”

Erwin smiled. The sun on his arms made the short blond hair glow golden, like a fragile web. Then the usual reservedness returned, as if the pain of his healing lip had reminded him on the gravity of their situation. “There was no way she'd have let Adam out of her sight if she didn't think you were dead.”

He said it with an absolute calm, as if pretending to be dead was practically the same thing as faking a laugh over a bad joke.

“If she had fucking aimed at my head-”

“That's not a professional shot.”

“It was _my_ head.”

“Sorry.” Then, after a moment of silence: “I needed you to take that risk.”

“I told you I'd help you, jackass,” Levi hissed.

“You said you would help Adam. I had to change plans when Miss Leonhart didn't act as expected... Another way to phrase it would mean that I let you do the dirty work while I maintained cover. You wouldn't have agreed – I'm no accomplice of yours.”

“Wouldn't have agreed if you were,” Levi growled, then sunk back into the seat and closed his eyes. “God, you fucker. Shit.” It was as close to acceptance as Levi ever got – it had worked out, no use bitching about it. As long as it didn't happen again...

“You saved me.” Erwin's voice was neutral, so casual that Levi wondered why he'd felt it necessary to even speak.

“Yeah.”

“I didn't think you would.” That probably was as close to true thankfulness as Erwin ever got, too. Just as well; Levi wasn't into long speeches about saving other men's asses with a baseball bat.

Erwin's rough knuckles slowly, deliberately brushed his cheek. His skin vaguely smelled of smoke and was as chapped as Levi had thought. Despite the steady jolting of the car, his hand was steady, gentle, and Levi instinctively kept his eyes closed, knowing that it would startle both of them if he met Erwin's eyes. It was too... raw. But the touch was warm and unintrusive. It made his skin tingle and warmed his groin.

“Want me to patch you up properly?”

His own voice was rough in Levi's ears. Erwin's knuckles stilled for a moment, then disappeared slowly, and he knew the man had understood.

“Please do.”

 

The sky was slowly turning orange when Erwin stopped the car in front of a not even that shabby motel. Levi had expected him to drive at least until nightfall and glanced at the bandage around Erwin's arm. There were red stains because the thin bandages of a first-aid kit weren't known to be more than a transitional solution, but he didn't seem to suffer too badly.

Erwin noticed where his eyes had wandered, even so briefly. He unbuckled his seat belt and removed his arm from it without clear discomfort. “This is relatively safe,” he answered when Levi hadn't asked him aloud. “I need to check Adam and contact a few people. I'll... see whether you can return home.”

The pause was tiny, but Levi heard it nonetheless. It was a nasty little silence that prickled at his nerves.

Return home. Even if he had somehow managed to be overlooked by the whole Reiss-family and Annie was the least vengeful bitch on earth, he now owed 'his' family a favor. Kenny didn't do friendly turns.

Erwin had to know that, that was why there was this tiny silence in his lie. Maybe he hoped to sort this out, that was why he wasn't convincing.

Although Erwin called the place 'relatively safe', Adam's presence remained hidden. It felt strange to wrap him into a blanket and smuggle him in like he really had been abducted.

Levi was moderately pleased that the rooms he sneaked in while Erwin was still at the reception desk (after cleaning his face and covering up his arm) contained two beds and a separate, albeit small living room. The bath was closet-like and tucked into a corner of the bedroom, but the couch in the living room looked like he could sleep on it if he placed some sort of sheet between himself and the cushion. Lying down would be a pain anyway, and the couch wasn't even that much shorter than him.

The benefits of a compact built.

Adam didn't even stir when Levi gently placed him on one of the beds and pulled his shoes off. He had no visible injuries safe for the bruises Levi's grip had left on him, but there were no signs of natural sleep yet. His body was cool, as it was to be expected under anesthetic, and Levi draped another layer of covers over him when Erwin entered.

“How much of this is he going to remember?”

Erwin could read Adam's slumbering mind as little as Levi could, but it felt necessary to ask.

“I'd like to claim he'll write you getting shot off as a nightmare,” Erwin replied, mercilessly sober. “However, there is a limit to repression. I'm afraid he has reached his.”

At the ripe age of almost four. Whatever crap Adam had botched up in his past life, he had already done penance for it. Levi groaned and stood up, scrubbing his knuckles over the bristly hair at the nape of his neck. “Got anything to sew with?”

He had actually meant to order Erwin around a little so he could sort his own thoughts, but the bastard completely missed the point and handed him a battered needle wrapper and a battery-sized spool of white thread.

Levi stared at him. Erwin shrugged. “I said I needed to reattach a few buttons.”

Even in his somehow beaten-up state, Erwin was just the type you'd buy that from. Levi grunted in response and took the wrapper and the spool. They left the bedroom, and Levi half-expected Erwin to turn on the TV for some background-noise as they sat on the couch – he didn't. He simply placed the car's first-aid kit between them and watched Levi thread the needle. He didn't flinch, neither when Levi removed the old bandage not when he disinfected the graze again; something about that stoicism was unsettling. Not that Levi would have preferred him to whine about it, not at all, but... the distant way Erwin regarded the needle piercing his skin reminded him on Annie.

Of course. Erwin had killed someone, just like Annie would have killed Levi. It merely came down to who was faster.

“You didn't use the switchblade.”

Apparently, getting his nose bloodied by a girl half his weight didn't affect Erwin's skills at mindreading. Levi pulled at the thread, pressing the torn flesh together with the remaining gloves from the kit over his hands. “'Suppose I don't need to ask whether you got your shots.”

Erwin ignored his change of topic neatly. “You went for blunt force when your record-”

“ _I'll shove that record up your ass if you mention it again._ ” Levi deliberately tugged at the thread, at least earning a wince from Erwin. “Why the fuck do you bring up my past whenever you get the chance, Smith?!”

“I'm trying to understand you,” Erwin replied with a note of irritation in his voice.

“The fuck you do,” Levi snapped abrasively and made another rough stitch, “you're trying to rile me up.”

“While you're sewing my arm shut?”

“Congrats on being an asshole _and_ a masochist.” Levi frowned but eased his hold on Erwin's arm so the stitches didn't end up too tight. “It's over, alright? Don't ask me about it. If you want to understand that badly, find another way to.”

Erwin stared at his own torn flesh that was being mended, his expression unreadable. He had that habit of repeating things he'd said earlier in a different context when he was lost for words, and Levi wondered if he would do it again. Or rather, _what_ he'd repeat.

“I don't want to,” Erwin said when Levi cut the thread. “It would make me wonder why I'd want to understand you. Whether my motives are... reasonable.”

Levi was on the verge of spitting at him again when the last word struck him with an odd feeling of insecurity. Reason was everything to Erwin, it measured the importance of his relationships. It gave him cover for his own critical analysis, and _reason_ spoke against a man who originated from a whole family of organized crime and whose past suggested a lively personal corruption.

“That whack Annie gave you was pretty mean. Might even have gotten you a mild concussion.” Levi had meant to sound casual as he fixed the cotton swab on Erwin's arm with band-aids. As he replaced the needle in the wrapper, he felt his fingers tremble ever so slightly.

“So... Maybe you're not up for reason now, Smith.”

Levi was fast, but just this time, Erwin was even faster: before he had quite reached out, he found himself yanked forward by his extended arm, and then finally, truly, they were kissing.

It was hard, frantic, his lips numbed slightly when they were pressed against his teeth, and he tasted a trace of blood from the cut on Erwin's lip. They were chapped and warm, there was that small hint of stubble that always existed and yet wasn't noticed if you weren't close, and Erwin's mouth moved with strange fervor, like he meant to conquer, not court.

Levi realized how much he had craved every little bit of it. He knocked the first-aid kit out of the way and became aware he was still wearing the gloves with little streaks of blood, Erwin's blood, _dirt_ , and buried them in blond hair nonetheless when Erwin pulled him over with a thrilling ease. It was an idiotic position, as he was seated next to Erwin but had tried to draw one leg underneath himself to get up, his spine was twisted in an uncomfortable way to allow him to face Erwin, while the man himself had trapped his wounded arm between his side and the backrest of the couch. It really was pathetically awkward.

Levi couldn't seem to get enough of it.

He managed to throw one of his legs over Erwin's lap, then changed his mind to struggle out of the damn gloves and finally _feel_ more than latex on his skin. He squeezed his eyes shut in frustration when the gloves refused to be pulled off by their fingers, then opened them again to see Erwin's eyes as slits of dark blue, almost feverish. His kisses weren't slowing down, his hands roamed Levi's body as if it was something he'd meant to do for so long. His palms were large and powerful, pressing down on clothed skin even on those places that were bruised and made Levi hiss with pain.

And yet, it was intoxicating to know that right this moment, Erwin wanted him too badly to even remember those bruises.

One of Levis hands finally came free from the glove, and he tossed it over the backrest to grab the side of Erwin's neck and pull him closer. Erwin made a low noise when Levi's tongue swept over his lip, arousal and impatience mixing in a sound that seemed to vibrate in his kiss. The heat that slammed into Levi's groin at that feeling felt like a punch and burned beneath his skin.

Skin. As eagerly as Erwin's interest in his body obviously was, he hadn't done anything to remove clothes, neither Levi's nor his own. When there was finally a break for air, Levi found himself panting lightly; he moved his legs and realized that his knees felt weak and tingly, but strong enough to heave himself up from his twisted position to straddle Erwin. He did, however, balance himself on the man's thighs rather than on his hips, consciously leaving space between them.

Erwin's eyes snapped up to meet his. There was vigilance and desire in his expression, blunter than when they'd fought, a moist shimmer on his lips that were now slightly open. He closed them when he noticed Levi's gaze, as if pretending to be unfazed, but it was a facade, like the refusal to show pain in a fight. _Work for it._

Levi tore the remaining glove off and felt himself grin. “Waiting for an invitation, Smith?”

He leaned in for another kiss without giving Erwin the opportunity for an answer – he had been teasing anyway – but felt the other hesitate for a second even as his large, calloused palms slid under Levi's shirt and seemed to leave scorching imprints on his back.

Levi pulled back, breathing harder and giving Erwin's already bruised lower lip a nip in punishment. “What.”

Erwin had lifted one of his hands in reflex to his lip, where the skin was reddened and slightly swollen, but not bleeding, and glanced up at Levi. He seemed perfectly in control, albeit his gesture betrayed him. Levi was dying to find out how long he could keep that up.

“If there was... at least a bed or something-”

A tiny pause for a breath of air in mid-sentence, long enough for Levi to be taken aback at this sudden (and misplaced) streak of chivalry, and when Erwin tried to go on, Levi growled a curse and pressed his palm against the other's mouth. It probably tasted of talcum powder and ethanol, and Erwin could have easily ripped it away, but he didn't. The powerful muscles of his legs tensed beneath Levi, he could feel the hands that had drifted to his hips clasping around him even tighter. The sharp blue eyes seemed to glow as the pupils swallowed more space.

It turned him on. Strength, outer and inner. Dominance. Fight.

Levi had never been with a man who didn't simply respect, but explicitly desired that. It made his heart race with vicious thrill and a tinge of subliminal fear.

“I hate sex in bed,” he hissed and pressed his elbows against Erwin's shoulders to put them both on eye-level. It was tempting to grind his hips against Erwin's thighs, and Levi swallowed audibly.

“Here,” he murmured after he'd brought his mouth close to Erwin's ear and found himself enveloped in the smell of cologne, sweat and a trace of cigarette smoke. “This, here... _Fuck_.”

He felt Erwin shiver and wondered no more whether his rambling made any sense to the other. Levi came to realize his own lips were still moving, soundlessly, and Erwin let him, didn't interrupt him with kisses as he pulled Levi's damaged shirt off.

Levi had gotten rid of the vest in the bathroom, uncomfortable with the stiff, heavy material and two bullets still wedged in the fiber. He had checked his ribs for unnatural bumps and washed sweat off with a paper towel, but otherwise had paid as little attention to the purple markings as he could. It seemed wise not to think about the bullets that could have pierced his skin, vessels and organs.

Erwin regarded the bruises solemnly for a moment, as if he memorized them as something he needed to include in his plans. Then he ran his hot tongue over the discolored, tender skin above Levi's heart, causing both a dull wave of pain and a heavy, slow throbbing of lust that seemed to vibrate into every corner of his body. Levi pressed his lips shut and buried his hands in irritatingly soft blond hair, balled them to fists with those strands between them and finally moved down to grind into Erwin's lap.

It broke whatever spell the sight of bullet-bruises had cast on Erwin. Levi gave him barely enough time and space to pull his shirt over his head and lose it somewhere before slamming his hips down again, all gentleness gone once more. Even through several layers of cloth, the friction on his cock made him gasp and writhe. Erwin wasted no time to fumble with his belt, though Levi suspected he feigned a little clumsiness when his palm ghosted irritatingly lightly over Levi's crotch, then cut off his thoughts by firmly taking his hips in his deliciously large hands and pressed them down.

God, but the man was fucking gorgeous.

Levi refused to make sound this time, gritting his teeth when heat raced up his spine and dropped again to pool in his groin.

“Fuck,” he groaned when he was remotely sure it would sound like a word. Maybe getting shot in the chest did things to your brain in more ways than one, but he hadn't been that turned on by something that didn't even involve much naked skin in a long time. Perhaps never.

“I'd drown someone... for a condom right now.”

Erwin responded with a husky little sigh that didn't seem to speak of regret: his cheekbones were dusted with a soft blush that softened his grim face, his neatly combed hair had fallen out of place when Levi had grabbed it; he looked up with a both hungry and rapturous expression that made Levi dizzy. He forgot what he'd been lamenting on when Erwin shoved stained denim aside and sneaked his hand under the waistband of his boxer shorts.

Erwin's calloused skin was dry – what the hell did it take to make that fucker sweat?! - and almost too rough, too brisk on Levi's aching erection. And yet it seemed to whip his already raw nerve-endings, the mixture of discomfort and intense pleasure made Levi jerk Erwin's chin up to kiss him again, drown any sound he might make while he rolled his hips again, into that coarse, _unsparing_ sensation.

His hands moved without halting, like Erwin's had done before, trading harsh caresses and little nips and kisses below the collar-line, finding old scars that fascinated him; but whenever he wanted to follow them with his eyes, Erwin distracted him, pulled him up or down with that ridiculous strength of his that didn't seem to be reduced by his wound.

The backrest was in the way, his jeans restricted his movements. Levi forced himself to stop – at some point he couldn't even remember, he'd begun to thrust into Erwin's hand, muffled little sounds escaping him with every breath.

Just when had he given Erwin control of this... Levi grabbed the other man's wrist and pulled it out of his shorts, fixing him with a heated stare that merely got him a hint of smug amusement.

Levi leaned in to brush his lips gently against the shell of Erwin's ear. “Wipe that smirk off your face, or I'll give you something else you can do that with.”

Erwin's first reply was an impertinent squeeze on his ass. “Your threat's lacking.”

“Sick shit.” But Levi grinned as he pulled Erwin's hand off, twisting it sharply in revenge before he got off the other and pulled his pants down, along with his underwear.

He was done playing around now.

Erwin's eyes widened, then automatically traveled to the dark, golf-ball-sized contour beneath the skin of his inner thigh, to another kind of scar that wouldn't fade. Levi let him stare for a second, take it in as he had done with the bruises on his chest, then braced himself and threw Erwin down on the cushions with the strength that nobody ever expected from someone so short.

Taller than him, stronger than him, older than him, prettier than him.

The couch creaked in protest when Erwin's weight hit, even more so when Levi climbed on top to crush their mouths together, tasting a trace of salty sweat. He hadn't given Erwin time to undress, and he felt that it was better this way, rough cloth on his skin and an illusion of protection; men like Erwin couldn't stand being totally naked under less than perfect circumstances.

And since Levi was a kind lover who considered that, he also deserved to stay on top. He smirked when Erwin's hands grasped his ass while the body beneath him bucked, trying to turn both of them around, and prevented the maneuver by digging his knees even deeper into the cushion. The position made it difficult for Erwin to use his full strength, but he was certainly trying to, and Levi clawed one hand into the armrest behind Erwin's head to secure himself and plant a mocking kiss on the man's brow.

Nearly the same moment, the jeans' bib abruptly rubbed over the sensitive underside of his cock in a jerky movement, and Levi moaned breathlessly.

His eyes were squeezed shut as he still processed the rough friction, and he had to stop himself from slamming his hips down to seek it. He was so hard he was starting to ache, and Erwin's slightly chapped knuckles glided over his cock; he hadn't even noticed one of his hands moving, and now it freed Erwin's own erection to trap it between their bodies.

He was... impressive. Levi wouldn't have cared at this point if he was not, if only that wonderfully large, rough hand that now encircled his own cock didn't leave... He sighed throatily and thrust into it, a choppy motion that allowed him to feel the slick moisture that lazily rolled from the tip.

He knew it wouldn't be long, and it made no sense to try to hold back; he couldn't, his chest and ribs hurt with a constant throb that somehow seemed part of this, it anchored him, melted together with the lust that pooled in his groin and thrummed through his whole body. And there was Erwin, his breathless kisses and his hand, his low voice that turned husky and warm even when his face was grim. Levi opened his eyes to meet his gaze and hold it as he wrapped his free hand around their cocks where Erwin's hand didn't cover it, flinching at the touch of his own cooler skin.

He felt both exposed and exquisite, naked on top of a man he didn't know, not even his real name, a man who had killed with a gun and kissed his bruises. Levi groaned and rocked against Erwin, ground his hips harder although he caught a glimpse of more bruises under Erwin's skin that had the wrong color to originate from his fight with Annie.

Levi didn't care. Not right now, perhaps never. He gave a strangled moan once Erwin's thumb brushed over his leaking tip and was suddenly yanked down by the nape of his neck for another kiss that was too hard, too rugged but strangely intimate.

Erwin pressed his back into the cushion of the couch as his body arched, the muscles of his jaws outlined beneath his skin. There was a tremble in his movements, a sign of his approaching orgasm that caused more heat to wash over Levi: he wanted to see him unravel, ached to feel it rather than just witness from above.

It was the last remotely coherent thought before his groin tightened and melted his world into white euphoria. Levi heard his own voice, hoarse and breathless, form a curse that was blasphemous at best, felt a chuckle rumble through Erwin's broad chest at the same time. He thought he'd joined in, but he wasn't sure over the rush of blood in his ears; Erwin's hand stayed, moved until the slick roughness was nearly painful and yet Levi didn't slap his hand away as it finally let go of his softening member, letting it sink over his own as they caught their breath.

Levi had let his sweaty forehead drop on Erwin's shoulder. He felt the hammering heartbeat of the other man even through dense bone and grinned mindlessly. Any kind of pain lingering in his body seemed erased, replaced by exhaustion, content and an odd kind of relief.

Erwin stirred after what could have been a couple of seconds or even a few minutes. Levi wasn't so sure when warmth still tingled in his limbs and even cooling sweat made no difference. And the semen, he noticed smugly, had landed on Erwin anyway.

“Can you stay here until tomorrow?”

The endorphin-high even pulled a snort of laughter from Levi as he sat up again and leered knowingly down at Erwin. “Like this? Fucking pervert.”

Erwin was apparently still feeling it, too, as his face didn't immediately close up again. He looked younger with his tousled hair and the blush coloring his cheeks, serene. “Your vocabulary is shocking enough. I'd like to spare Adam that.”

Adam, yes. Levi sobered and leaned back, surprised when Erwin's hand on his thigh stopped him. Or rather, seemed to ask him to stay, even though Erwin removed it again slowly, as if he had reigned the instinct in again.

“What are you going to do now?”

No dynamic 'we' on this matter. And Levi hadn't made up his mind about that, either.

Erwin briefly closed his eyes, then sat up. He favored his wounded arm now, and for a moment, he glanced at the bruises decorating Levi's chest again. His face was closer now, exhausted and glowing from recent sex, although a pensive expression was already settling in again.

“Wait until tomorrow,” he finally decided. It sounded grave, like a judgment being delivered.

Levi huffed and wantonly ran his cleaner hand over the mussed blond hair.

“Wanna know what eases waiting, Smith?”

This time, he could hear the chuckle fully, feel the deep vibrations and see the tiny wrinkles it drew on Erwin's face. He didn't care where it came from, why. “You might be a size too large for me, Mr. Mercer.”

It sounded almost, _almost_ affectionate. Hormones could do that to you. Levi merely smirked at him.

“I hear that more often than you think.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My dears!  
> I am so very sorry for missing my proclaimed upload-date by a few, well, months. I did not abandon the story, but the chapter kept going and going, and I didn't want to change my arrangement on this point... I hope you enjoy this monster, the ones that are still out there and haven't ditched the story.  
> The last one following will definitely come out before the next chapter of SnK (I know I claimed that before, yes!) for... obvious reasons that I don't want to spoiler. The April-chapter did influence me during writing, maybe it's noticeable, maybe it's just in my head.  
> Anyway! Thank you so much for your support; I probably would have been even slower without it. I personally blame it on Levi. I'm usually an Erwin-POV-writer, so writing Levi is tough, but fun. Mass-Effect-music goes well with Levi, for... once more, I don't have reasons.  
> If you're up for it, join me for the epilogue!
> 
> Also, couch sex. I planned it in a whole other way at the beginning, but... dynamics!


	5. Father

The day was clouded and slightly cooler than the ones before, but spring was well on its way; the park was bustling with life, the vibrant green was drawing people out on their lunch-breaks, schoolkids skipped on class, different kinds of sports reappeared outside. It was noisy in a pleasant way, a lawnmower droned from one direction or the other and the desire for ice-cream seemed somewhere in the air.

It wasn't terribly uncommon when a salary-man with a briefcase in one hand and a cone with ice-cream slumped on one of the benches overlooking the park. They were shielded by trees and bushes, which made them popular with couples late at night and unpopular with everyone else during the day when it was still rather cool in the shade. Nonetheless, he wasn't totally alone: a woman was typing on her pad where the shadows didn't reflect on the display, and another man was reading the newspaper in relative peace and quiet.

The salary-man took the bench behind him so they were sitting back to back and nonetheless slightly shifted, put his briefcase aside and licked drops of melted ice-cream from the cone. Finally, he glanced over his shoulder to see which page the other was reading.

“Mind lending me the sports section when you're done with it?”

The man he'd asked tipped his sunshades lightly, but he folded the newspaper to pull the desired part out and hand it over. “Try not to stain it with ice-cream.”

“Would've gotten you some for that shiner on your face,” the salary-man gruffly replied as he took the folded pages and laid it on his knees, “but they don't offer cinnamon-flavor in your average ice-cream-cart.”

“I see.” There was a brief lightness in his voice as he opened his newspaper again. “I'll settle for ginger, then.”

“ _That's_ not common either, and like hell am I gonna run over there again to buy you ice-cream.” A grumpy pause. “Nice to see you're still alive, Erwin. How's the little bouncy ball?”

“Not bouncy, but alright, I believe.” Blue eyes ghosted over printed letters, settling on the next article. “Or do you mean someone else entirely?”

“Touchy subject. Alright.” The salary-man sighed quietly and skimmed the weekend's matches with a glint of interest. “It's not like I'm doing you a _favor_ here.”

Erwin was silent for a few seconds, but his eyes had stopped moving. He was staring at the paper, then took his shades off to carefully rub his eyes and replace them again. “Sorry, Nile. I'm...” It was the moment to justify himself, explain his unusual testy response. Show some weakness for the sake of removing tension.

“I'm sorry,” he simply finished.

“I figured.” Nile frowned at the chart's numbers, as the results obviously didn't please him. “I don't get you, though. You're not exactly doing yourself a favor, especially since we've had rotation now. The new lead is... not that patient. They're content to write everyone missing off as dead and call back those remaining without an assignment – that includes you.”

“And the boy? He's obviously more important than we thought.”

Nile grimaced, as if his ice-cream had suddenly turned sour. It was quite an accurate description, probably. “That's one way of seeing it.”

“Not the general policy, then.”

“Come on, Eyebrows, you knew that when the reaction was so damn slow.” Nile rolled a chunk of ice-cream over his tongue, as if searching for his next words in the melting substance. “Turns out that the little runaway is more interesting to them.”

“He hasn't changed his mind about cooperating with anyone; I doubt he ever will.”

“No need to negotiate with me, at least now.”

“Sorry. It's a habit.” Erwin didn't sound too sorry. Nile snorted. “You've turned people around faster and more efficient than anyone else in the past two years. You know that, _they_ know that, and little Levi is still with you when he's clearly the cut-and-run-type – but I'm not the one you need to work that out with. Anyway, his cooperation may not be that important.”

“Oh.” Erwin showed no sign of surprise, as if Nile's estimation was hardly new to him. He put the newspaper down to feel for something in his pocket. “Mercer is rather convinced that his family isn't interested in him, and he's not the heir.”

“Things have changed; maybe we never got it right from the start.” Nile peered at the page. “The current heir is acting wayward, and who says it hasn't always been the plan? Let the little runt disappear from everyone's radar too cool off, then pull him out of the hat again when the next generation gets full of themselves.”

Erwin glanced over his shoulder at the other man, pretending to get a glimpse of the sports section. “I've read the record. But Mercer seems earnest.”

“He's still playing by his uncle's rules, isn't he? Keeping the name and all. Maybe he's just _convinced_ he's out of there. And there's been some rumors that Kenny always keeps an eye on him, and that's where it gets interesting for us.” Nile paused when he heard a low click, then scratched the thin beard on his chin. A brief moment of alarm until the sound had been classified as harmless. “You picked that up again.”

Erwin lighted the tip of his cigarette and inhaled sharp smoke, holding it between thumb and index finger. “I see,” he said quietly, ignoring the remark on his habit. “If Mercer stays, he's bound to be in danger. And that will bring his family on scene again, lure out bigger fish. _If_ you're right.”

Nile sighed and waved smoke aside with the newspaper. The woman shot them an annoyed look when the smell wafted in her direction, which Erwin returned with a stony expression.

“You know I hate this,” Nile finally said. “If I imagine one of my own... Christ. But it can't go on like this – not for the boy and not for you. You'll ruin his life and your career... as well as your lungs, by the way.” He waved smoke aside again for good measure. “Come to think of it, _his_ lungs, too.”

“Sorry.” This time, it was more of a clear ending to that topic rather than an apology. Nile didn't pry; they sat in silence, strangers in a park, while the sun wandered. A cyclist rushed past, the woman glanced at her phone and then got up, leaving them in relative seclusion.

“Are we still friends?”

It was spoken in a neutral tone, like a question about time and date. Casually, with no note that suggested a certain expectation or a great importance. But he had asked; Erwin never spoke to simply fill silence.

Nile brushed crumbs from his trouser-leg, fixing his gaze on the cloth. “I'd say so.” Then, after a pause: “Not so sure sometimes.”

“So you agree now, too.”

An angry sigh, because anger was easier than the more complex, painful emotions that might linger. Bitterness was invisible, but settling in like the shadows when a cloud crept in front of the sun. The already tense lines around Nile's mouth and the already slowly receding hairline were evidence enough. “It's... hard not to. Especially with the things you've said about your meeting with Mr. R junior. You have to admit it makes sense that way.”

“No,” Erwin said with a strange note of patience. “I do not have to.”

“If you'd just-”

“Hanji is not dead. And she's not a traitor either.”

That tone seemed to irritate Nile even further, and he craned his head to look at Erwin, his brows furrowed and teeth grit, the picture of a barely contained snarl. “You've failed to prove that for months.”

“There is no evidence for your suspicion either.”

“It's not _my_ suspicion, it's common sense! And you know damn well that Zoe is smart, she knows how to cover up tracks, especially from you. The only reason you're still trusted is that you didn't act up, do you even get that?!”

“She wouldn't have left him behind.” Erwin's voice was even quieter now, the ire only noticeable if you had known him since the time when he had not yet been able to conceal it so well.

Nile stared at his profile for a moment, the anger in his face slowly easing, cooling off into something like grudging lenience. He still kept his head turned to Erwin, but not with the same tension. They were quiet like two people who didn't know what to say to each other. Or had run out of things to say.

“The worst crimes we commit for our children, even if we never thought ourselves capable of it,” Nile said slowly. “You don't know it, that... overwhelming fear for them. It makes ditching principles easy, and it gets worse when a child grows up; you can't ignore it.”

“ _You_ can.” This time, Erwin's two words were clipped, bleak. He stared ahead, smoke slowly trickling from between his lips.

Nile grinned humorlessly. “I can't. I just know they're as safe as they can be, and Marie's got them. And I got her. But Hanji didn't have anyone.”

Erwin didn't respond, which made Nile shift uncomfortably. There was the absence of something, of a protest, of anything. Anyone watching would have thought their casual conversation had ended.

“You never acted on it. And she didn't request to split.”

“He ought to be like her.” The quickness of Erwin's words that didn't quite fit the topic suggested that he hadn't listened, whether he'd done so on purpose or because he had been absorbed in his own thoughts. “She would teach him everything, if she could.”

“Lord Almighty.” Nile rolled his eyes, lenience replaced with a hint of annoyance now. “The boy's not her clone, Erwin. You can't teach him stuff and expect he's as crazy about that as Zoe – kids do have a personality on their own. Can't stuff their heads with knowledge because that fits your picture.” The pause he made lasted only half a second. “And you have no right to try.”

“Thank you for your parental advice.” Erwin wasn't aiming to conceal the irony; it was an old game between them, and it seemed centuries ago that they had played it.

Nile snorted. “Hate to say so, but I hope Mr. Criminal Nanny gets it better than you. The day when that's all we have...”

As a professional child psychologist required time, stability and a fixed place, and none of these were safe factors right now. That had always been critical, one more factor that after months of little assistance, did make you feel like everyone had simply forgotten. As if Adam was a closet that Miss Hanji Zoe had not cleaned out and instead taken the key with her.

Nile glanced at his watch, then slapped his thighs in a somewhat concluding gesture. “I'll get you backup and-”

“No. The moment he's outnumbered, he'll run.” With a cynical clarity, Erwin always detected whether the 'he' their quick changes of topic mentioned was Adam or Levi. And if backup, any kind of assistance was offered, it was the latter. He was used to it by now. And he couldn't be irrational.

Nile frowned and stroked his beard, sinking into the bench again. “That's... bad.” He didn't question Erwin's estimation; he rarely did when it concerned people's personalities. “If Adam opens up to him, then whatever Zoe encoded ends up with someone like... him.”

“Unless I turn him,” Erwin replied, almost casually.

“From a pessimistic point of view, that will raise suspicion whether _you_ could be turned instead to follow Zoe.”

“I have you to suppress that suspicion and vouch for me, don't I?”

It was nearly impossible to define what underlined these words; if you wanted, you could hear mockery or honesty in them, or both, or nothing at all. Erwin rose and put out the stub of his cigarette in a sand-filled ashtray, then tugged the folded newspaper under his arm.

Nile looked up, his eyes sharpened briefly when the other towered over him, more shadows were cast.

“I'll see what I can do,” he said finally and took his briefcase. It could mean everything and, once more, nothing at all. “And you know...”

Erwin had already turned to leave, but stopped: again, it was hard to say whether he did it out of courtesy or to actually listen.

“Don't be more Catholic than the Pope. Just... buy him ice-cream or something, some stuffed animal. Something to hug.”

Their eyes met for a moment, all that estrangement and old warmth mixing until it left confusion and caution in its wake. Erwin's shoulders remained tense, as if relaxing could prove dangerous despite weariness.

Then he nodded and turned to leave. This time, Nile didn't stop him.

 

“Throw it higher. In _my_ direction.”

“It's difficult.”

“Tell me about it.”

There were reasons why baseball wasn't the typical game you taught children that still struggled with the perception of their own body, least of all children who were below a certain height.

But it was a fact that reality could be ignored, especially by little creatures. Once Adam had laid eyes on the baseball bat that Levi hadn't been quick enough to hide somewhere, he'd developed the fixed idea of learning that game.

Maybe it was some kind of karma-justice to see a brat trying to handle a club too heavy and too long for him that had hit people before. It was sick; as if everyone passing by would notice that it was no ordinary piece of sports equipment, that its purpose had been twisted.

Levi had owned this bat for long years, and he had never played baseball with it. And he hadn't thought of it, either. It was not like he hadn't played with his friends when he'd been younger, for ambition and amusement when he'd been older. But no games that required a lot of space, and playing with something that was considered as a weapon was like a taunt. If you played with something dangerous, it was a game of nerves, reflexes, psychology.

Adam had seen the bat and was determined to learn how to use it. It was... macabre.

The boy moved to retrieve the air-filled plastic ball they used to make it at least a little easier and took stance again. Levi had taken the bat since it was too large and heavy for the Adam – and because seeing him try to wield it just felt plain wrong. Adam always watched him intensely, obviously concentrating hard to absorb the 'technique' so he could take over.

Fuck, this was weird. But the little creature deserved to have its way occasionally. He had recovered from the narcotic with the surprisingly fast self-healing of a child his age, and although it seemed like he didn't remember much of his rescue, Levi was in doubt whether that settled everything. No... It probably settled nothing.

Which made it even harder to decide his next move. It had been two days since he'd dragged himself into this mess, and that was one more day than Erwin had requested him to stay. At first, it had seemed unfair to leave Adam alone in his drowsy and confused state while Erwin sorted out _things_ that weren't explained. And then it had been treacherously easy to let him arrange all those perfectly good reasons for Levi's absence, Adam's sudden removal from the day-care center, the bureaucratic details.

He couldn't allow himself to get into someone's debt again. It didn't even matter that Erwin still hadn't clearly told him _who_ exactly he worked for, because the interest they would make him pay would be too high in any case.

But it was possible that they were also the only ones that could give him back his life. Levi hadn't thought of himself as settled until the thought that he'd miss Eld's wedding proved to be unexpectedly... bitter. He hadn't said goodbye to any of the brats either. And he was the only one who knew how to fix the music box that so many children had tried to chew on already. Also, they were short of a keeper for football now, and he hadn't finished his documentary for Thomas, who'd start school in a few weeks...

Levi wouldn't mind going back. It had been idiotic to feel alien between his colleagues just because some things were different for him, because it had never _mattered._

Except now, he was kind of dangerous for them.

“Levi?”

Adam stared at him, the abominably yellow ball between his hands. Then, before Levi could wonder what had been going on behind these eyes while he spaced out, the focus shifted, and Adam threw the ball in a rare spur of energy.

It landed in the grass a few steps from Erwin's feet. He picked it up on his way without breaking his stride, and without a comment.

Levi wasn't fond of making a fool out of himself for the little creatures either, but there were moments when you had to. Sort of. He had no idea, not even now, what caused this strange lack of warmth in Erwin's behavior – it was alright to risk his life for the boy, but it overstrained him to make some exaggerated catching-move or at least join the game somehow?

Levi had noticed that while Erwin and Adam generally shared a room, they had separate beds and didn't act any closer than during the day: no storyreading, no cuddling, no checking for monsters under the bed. Things that Adam didn't seem to need, but inconspicuously looked for, like any other kid.

And naturally, he looked to Levi for them because he had, in his line of work, provided these rituals. _Someone_ had to.

“About time.” Levi waved Erwin closer and handed him the bat. “Your turn. Adam, give me that ball.”

Erwin had taken the bat with more natural ease than Levi could, and now regarded him as if he hadn't said anything at all. “I need to talk to you.”

“Later,” Levi clipped as he let go of the bat's handle and instead took the ball from Erwin. “We need your arms.”

That at least seemed to catch Erwin's attention; for a moment, his eyes sharpened even more, and Levi realized he might think of 'firearms'.

Talk about natural ease with weapons.

Erwin gave him a hard stare, then apparently decided to play along – likely to save time and earn a little goodwill, not out of interest. Which made Levi wary what he was up to.

Then again, they couldn't beat around the bush any longer. Just... this brief delay, because it was such a disgustingly nice day out in the park.

Levi nodded at Adam, who regarded them soberly – like he, too, had read Erwin right and was already expecting to be sent away. As usual, he didn't voice his needs, cutting back on his interests when there was no basis of reason. “There we go, 'nother robot.” And to Erwin, he added: “Kneel behind Adam.”

Erwin looked at him like he wondered whether Levi might have whacked himself with the baseball bat. Adam just stared as if Erwin and the robot-game were not even remotely compatible.

Family likeness at its best.

“We should leave now,” Erwin said, whereas Levi glowered at him. “Get on your knees already, Smith. It's a game.”

Although his voice had its normal bite, Levi cursed himself for feeling a feeble, but existent spark of excitement at those words. This was the completely wrong time and place, not to mention that they needed to split up again. Levi wasn't foolish enough to think that Erwin would neglect his duty because Levi had saved him, or because of a brief fling that had passed some time and relieved stress.

Going by Erwin's behavior, though, that wasn't everything. And Levi doubted he'd misjudged the man.

“You need to come here.”

Adam looked up at his not-father, hands folded in front of his body. There were still slight shadows beneath his eyes, and he'd tried to rub the sunscreen Levi had applied to him off with his sleeve, leaving typical smears near his hairline and nose. How he still managed to look to serious was beyond reason.

Maybe Adam had described the game to Erwin, or the man was quick on the uptake for a change, because he moved behind Adam and crouched – God forbid he got green stains on his knees. In comparison, Adam looked ridiculously small and even thinner, and red spots bloomed on his cheeks and neck. Levi couldn't quite hear him talk, but he caught the high, nervous squeak of his voice.

Erwin hadn't ever hugged the child, not even when Adam had woken up. Levi knew it could have happened when he hadn't witnessed it, but he knew by now that Erwin avoided both physical and emotional contact.

So when he moved his arms around Adam so that the boy could grasp his wrists and aim the bat, the flush of nervous excitement spread all over the small face. Even more so when he had to move back a little to give Erwin more space to awkwardly flex his arms and his back was pressed against the older man's chest. His voice cracked during the explanation to a pitch.

Damn it. Adam was no longer a child under his care, Levi wasn't obligated to care for his upgrowth, and it was wiser to not even try. _Someone_ would look after Adam.

“We're ready.”

No, they were not.

Levi could see that playing the robot-game would be sort of inefficient even before throwing the ball: Erwin didn't quite get the concept, and Adam's arms were too short to 'order' him to gather momentum. But in this case, the boy wasn't as fussy with his rules as usual; in fact, not fussy at all. His focus had shifted, and it would have been a sappy little picture – if it hadn't been clear to Levi that Erwin considered his duty to keep Adam physically unharmed and left everything else to an undefined _someone._ Which had been the day-care center in the past months, and now...

The bat hit the ball in a surprisingly good angle with more force than before and sent it flying into the bushes. Levi wasn't naive enough to think of it as an accident, but had to stifle a wry grin when Adam scurried after it with the typical excitement of a little creature that was hunting for a lost article in the jungle of a public park.

“What a shitty excuse for a home run.” Levi rose to stretch and cross his arms. “Your father beat you up or something?”

For a split second, Erwin's eyes shot down to him with a genuine surprise that told Levi his guess was inaccurate, but obviously fit to provoke a reaction. “No.”

“Then for fuck's sake, the brat isn't contaminated. You're not gonna get polluted or some shit if you touch him.”

“You know, there is no need to un-censor your language for me.”

“Don't change the topic.”

“I don't see how it's important for you.”

It wasn't, but it was apparently a sensitive topic, even for someone as... desensitized as Erwin. Which made Levi wonder just why he couldn't seem to relate to Adam: you didn't need to be crazy about brats, but Adam wasn't even demanding. And he'd been abducted. That was a free-ride-ticket for a little indulgence, wasn't it?

Levi glared at him, the sudden pang of self-consciousness angered him even more. “You hate him or what?”

Erwin still had the baseball bat, albeit he did hand it back to Levi despite his hostile tone. “Of course not.”

He seemed to consider this the quickest way to get to the topic he was interested in, so Levi immediately replied: “I don't care whether you don't wanna get attached, he's got needs, too.”

“I'm not his father.” Erwin said it as if it was a perfectly reasonable argument – as if everyone not related by blood should treat a child like an adult. Levi took the bat back with a strange mixture of relief and strain; it was warm from Erwin's hands, like a distant touch. “So what?”

“It's not my place.”

How that made any sense was beyond Levi. He was pretty sure it wouldn't be any clearer if he had _not_ been fathered by some john in desperate times, or if he hadn't met any very caring stepdads during his work in the day-care center. Erwin seemed to think that the man who shared a child's genes was also the only person fit for the role of a father, and _that_ was just a load of crap.

“I don't care. You can't hold the position until that guy comes.” Which, going by the precarious state of Adam's safety, would not work anytime soon anyway, given that this man was even interested. Adam was uncomplicated at first glance, but harder to read than adults on the second – and obviously excellent at fooling those if they had no experience with kids.

Two things about Erwin that Levi had noticed by now, though.

One, talking him into something was nearly impossible once his mind was set.

Two, he didn't even pretend to reconsider.

“If you stay with him, I'll offer you my assistance.”

Levi let the wood of the bat smack into his palm. “You mean, you wanna recruit me.”

“As does your family. You want neither.” Granted, Erwin didn't miss a beat. “You won't be recruited officially, but you will basically continue your work-”

“If that helps you sleep,” Levi bit and barely suppressed the urge to roll his eyes; he still had problems to let Erwin out of his sight when they were so close, as if a feeling of security or at least normality would never settle in. He wasn't even sure he wanted that to happen.

Naturally, Erwin continued as if he hadn't said anything: “-under the given circumstances. There's the possibility of returning to your old life, if that's possible.”

“I don't want gifts,” Levi hissed, suddenly wishing that Adam would return now. It was rare for Erwin to let the boy out of his sight if so many people were around, and it was unsettling. So far, Levi's heritage had merely been convenient for him, a skeleton in the closet that could be used for blackmail. Now, he regarded Levi with the same intense focus that had so far been reserved for Adam. Calculating. Levi had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being manipulated, but choices were few.

And Erwin knew it. He didn't apply much pressure because he didn't need to, and was intelligent enough to guess that flaunting his power would provoke Levi's animosity. If only there was a way of knowing how much power Erwin actually had, or if he was simply a smart pawn himself...

“You'd deserve better.” Erwin said it with cool dispassion, as though it was a common fact, not a compliment. Despite the things he had to know Levi had done before. “But so does Adam. You will be paid the same as before if you stay, and you will be relatively safe. I assume you haven't been asked for a trade-off yet?”

No, he hadn't. And that was what truly worried Levi.

The old man wasn't forgetful – he'd be dead if he was. And he hadn't gone soft in the crappy remains of his brain either, he had to _know_ Levi had turned to contacts of his family. But he hadn't demanded anything for his favor so far, and that was unlike him: Kenny always collected his debts in a short time frame, especially when he wanted to make a point. The old fucker would never miss the golden opportunity to repeat that he'd been right all along, that Levi _would_ turn to him eventually because of some shit he couldn't get out on his own.

It didn't sit well with Levi, but he hated the implication that he suddenly needed a strong shoulder for support when he'd dealt with shit like that alone for most of his life.

“You're not-”

“Your accomplice, yes. And that's not what you need now, either.”

“I was going to say 'tax counselor', but please. Enlighten me what I _need_.” Despite his annoyance and general tension, the flirtatious note slipped into Levi's voice like an addition to mockery.

However, it seemed to entice Erwin in that hard-to-read-way of his; just for a short moment, and impossible to actually see. It was more like Levi felt the other's posture change slightly, relax a fraction and tense differently at the same time.

Talking about power...

Naturally, Adam chose this very minute to return with the ball, flushed and with tousled hair. “I found it,” he said, as if it wasn't obvious, then looked at the baseball bat that had been returned in his absence, and his face fell. “Are we done?”

Erwin couldn't possibly have known that Adam would ask a question that basically summed up the issue that hung between them; but then again, maybe he knew Adam a lot better than he realized himself. Levi did, and it felt weird, as if he was a spectator in moments like these, then drawn into the scene again.

Adam had stopped between them, for once not immediately assembling dutifully beside Erwin's leg. He, too, apparently sensed something, and it frightened him. Levi could see it in the way his glowing cheeks turned blotchy, his pallid complexion returned in phases.

He wasn't cute by a general definition, or very endearing. Levi knew that if he announced his leave now, Adam would not be surprised; just like he hadn't been surprised when Levi had turned him over to Annie. He could make himself believe that Adam had already lost his trust in him that day, that it was pointless to try winning it back. That Adam was fucked up anyway and would be just fine in that absurd… abeyance Erwin kept him in.

“Aren't you tired, little Smith?”

Adam obviously did not consider that an answer, but he seemed to like the name. He liked anything that related him to Erwin.

When he nodded, it was more because he thought a confirmation was expected from him with a phrasing like that.

Levi held out his hand to take the ball from him, and Adam passed it with a slight hesitation. Satisfied, Levi tugged it under his arm and laid the bat over his shoulder. It still felt alien, like he was balancing a shotgun and had his finger on the trigger.

“Since I have the baggage now, how 'bout we split the work and Big Smith here carries you?”

It looked like Erwin liked neither the name nor the idea itself – but then again, he didn't seem to like receiving orders in general. Any change in his mien was temporarily lost to Levi when he bent down nonetheless, and perhaps it was for the best. Adam saw, no one else, and there were moments when that was right. Levi wasn't good at family-building, he had never wanted to do that himself; but it was strangely easy to forget about Kenny's outstanding favor once Adam's face subtly brightened up when he found himself so high above the ground. His fingers clutched the fabric of Erwin's shirt as he looked around the park as if it had suddenly transformed. Though his eyes didn't linger anywhere, and Levi saw through him: staring down from a tree would never have had the same effect on Adam as being picked up by his father.

Levi cleared his throat. All this cheesy harmony was giving him stomach-cramps – actually, no, those were his healing bruises. “We're good to go, then.”

The corners of Erwin's eyes crinkled lightly as he allowed himself to display something like contentment. Levi couldn't have told it by his posture since holding Adam's weight required Erwin's shoulders to stay tense, and he might have missed it entirely. But just this once, Erwin seemed to think it alright to let him see.

“Creep,” Levi muttered.

Erwin glanced down at him.

“You do realize that it would be for the best to change your name into something conform.” It didn't actually sound like a question.

Levi scoffed and ruffled Adam's hair for good measure. “Like hell I'm gonna marry you.”

Erwin's face had long since recovered its grim expression, thoughts once more withdrawn behind those hard blue eyes. No doubt planning ahead and still, in some obscure way, very present.

“Good.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It is done. And before the Worst Chapter Of Them All.  
> I do ship Erwin/Hanji, though I only developed that crush during writing a challenge (ironically, on the topic of 'couples that would never end up together') – so including it in this story would have made it chaotic. What Erwin truly feels for Hanji is up to your interpretation; a gentleman never tells.
> 
> So! It is done. I'm immensely grateful for all the feedback! I know AU is often harder to read and requires some getting-used-to, especially with this content where people rarely say anything straight. So I'm very glad some of you still liked it!  
> I haven't quite decided whether I want to continue this as part of a series or start something new entirely. Lately I have become engrossed in Elemental Gelade again – the concept and the artwork, not that much with the characters and story, and since Erwin is short of an arm and a human (and foul-mouthed) weapon is just what he needs... Or I will settle for an odd murder mystery. Because they do make a good team of amateur sleuths. And then there's still that Sci-Fi...  
> I don't know. If you have any specific suggestions, I'm always curious!  
> Also, I am not dodging the original universe because of my bruised heart. Absolutely... not. Just got something in my eye and... stuff.

**Author's Note:**

> 'Adam Smith' is (amongst others) the name of a Scottish philosopher and economist – and a person who'd probably be immensely interesting in the universe of Attack on Titan...
> 
> Children really are interesting little creatures; after working with them, I found the thought of Levi taking care of young kids quite entertaining. I can't picture him being a perfect pedagogue, so here we go... He's managing. And they do get along.
> 
> Criticism is always appreciated and not ignored!


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